Strain improvement of entomopathogenic fungal species beauveria bassiana and metarhizium anisopliae by protoplast fusion.

Protease hyper producing recombinant strains were produced by intergeneric protoplast fusion of entomopathogenic fungi Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae. β-glucuronidase and KCl were used as lysing enzyme and osmotic stabilizer. Along with inter-generic fusion, intra-strain and inter-strain fusions were also carried out using polyethylene glycol (PEG) as fusogen. When the fused protoplasts were regenerated on Czapekdox agar medium, they exhibited fast mycelial growth and abundant sporulation when compared to non-fusants. Pr1 and Pr2 specific activities were found to be increased by two- fold in recombinant strains than the nonfusants and the parental strains.