Beauveria bassiana is widely studied for its potential as biopesticide. However, little is known about the factors to influence genetic diversity among isolates. In this work, we aimed to study the gene diversity of 42 isolates to figure out the impact of sequences variability on various biological features. The accumulated data showed no correlation between sequence variability and the fungal geographic localization. Meanwhile, weak to strong correlations have been obtained between the sequence diversity of various genes and the studied biological features. Interestingly, Biotrophy-associated gene 2 gene variability was correlated with all the studied biological features, being an important marker to determine isolates of interest for biological control. Therefore, the obtained data would serve as a database to focus on interesting genes related to improving or screening highly virulent isolates as biological control agents.

Beauveria comprises entomopathogenic fungi frequently isolated from insect cadavers, among which Beauveria bassiana is the most widely studied species of entomopathogenic fungal genus for its high potential as a biological pesticide. Even though it has been reported that B. bassiana is a heterogeneous assemblage of strains, little is known about the factors that might drive the genetic diversity among various isolates. In this work, we ought to study the gene diversity of 33 isolates in order to figure out the relationship between their gene diversity and biological features. First, we analyzed gene sequences that are involved in developmental and immunological processes of the fungal isolates and host. Now we are checking whether the gene diversity is related to the genes function, the isolates geographic localization, thermo-tolerance and virulence of the isolates. The obtained results so far showed no correlation between the genetic diversity and the fungal geographic localization. But interestingly, a positive correlation has been obtained between the virulence and the genetic diversity based on the internal transcribed spacers (ITS). Further analyses are aiming to confirm the obtained data and to analyze possible correlations between the genetic diversity and morphological and transcriptional data of the studied isolates. Based on the obtained results, we could much strongly focus on interesting genes which might be related to improving or screening highly virulent fungal agents as biological control agents.