Phylum: Deutromycota
An important division
of fungi with around 17,000 species. Many of these are saprobic, but many are
of great importance to us because they are parasites which diseases of plants,
animals, and human. However, it is a dustbin phylum. Contain species that have
no known normal sexual stage so that they cannot be placed with confidence in
other classes. Most reproduce by conidia, although a few are purely mycelial,
developing no spores. The conidia are produced externally on conidiophores or
more rarely directly from the vegetative mycelium The great majority of the
fungi in the class are likely to be Ascomycota in which the ascus stage has not
yet been discovered or in which it has been lost in the course of evolution. A
few may be conidial stages of Basidiomycota.
(The stage in which
the normal sexual fusion of haploid nuclei occurs is known asteleomorph, the
asexual stage being the anamorph. The whole
fungus including all its morph is known as the holomorph).
The division of
Deutromycota into two large groups is based on morphology of conidial
apparatus.