The endophytic fungal strain KJ-1 was isolated from the symptomless tissue of stem bark of M. azedarach L., which was collected at Yangling, Shaanxi province, China, in August 2011. The producing strain was cultured on a plate of potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium at 28 ± 0.5 °C for 5 days. Then one piece (approximately 7 mm2) of mycelium was inoculated aseptically to 50 mL Erlenmeyer flasks each containing 20 mL of PD liquid medium, and the seed liquids were incubated at 28 ± 0.5 °C for 3 days on a rotary shaker at 120 rpm. A suspension (100 µL) of the seed liquid was inoculated aseptically to 500 mL Erlenmeyer flasks each containing 60 g of rice and 90 mL of distilled water. There were 300 flasks in total, and the flask cultures were incubated at 28 ± 0.5 °C for 4 weeks.

The fungal strain C. globosum was separated from the sterilized leaves of G. biloba, a medicinal plant growing in Linyi, Shandong province, China. The fungus C. globosum was cultivated on PDA medium for 5 days at 28 ℃ to provide the culture broth (30 L).

A strain of C. globosum TY-2 was initially isolated from the plant Polygonatum sibiricum, collected in 2015 from Linan, Zhejiang Province, China. Serial transfers of one of the resulting colonies from Polygonatum sibiricum provided a pure strain of C. globosum. The fungal strain was cultured at 28 &#8451 for six weeks in a oatmeal medium (50 L) containing 1 % soluble sucrose and 0.1 % casein.