The fungus was obtained from the fresh leaves of Euphorbia sieboldiana, which were collected from the campus of China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China, in April 2013. After cultivation on potato dextrose agar (PDA) at 28 °C for 7 days, two pieces of the agar (about 1.0 cm³) were added to an Erlenmeyer flask (500 mL) with 150 mL of potato dextrose liquid medium, and the flask was incubated on a rotary shaker at 28 °C and 150 rpm for 5 days to prepare seed culture. Solid fermentation was carried out in 12 Erlenmeyer flasks (500 mL) each containing 120 g of sterilized rice and 10 mL of seed culture, and the flaks were cultivated at 28 °C for 30 days.

The endophytic fungus Hyalodendriella sp. Ponipodef12 (GenBank accession number HQ731647) was isolated from the healthy stems of the 'Neva' hybrid of Populus deltoides Marsh × P. nigra L.. The fungus was cultured on PDA (potato 200 g/L, dextrose 20 g/L and agar 20 g/L) medium in Petri dishes at 25 °C for 10 days. For seed culture, two to three plugs of agar medium (0.5 × 0.5 cm) with fungal cultures were inoculated in each 250-mL Erlenmeyer flask containing 100 mL potato dextrose broth (PDB) medium, and incubated on a rotary shaker at 150 rpm and 25 °C for 5 days. For fermentation culture, about 50 mycelium pellets were inoculated in each 1,000-mL Erlenmeyer flask containing 300 mL PDB medium, and incubated on a rotary shaker at 150 rpm and 25 °C for 20 days.

The endophytic fungus (strain Nitaf22) was isolated from the inner tissue of the healthy root of a three-year-old tobacco N. tabacum L. grown in the greenhouse of the campus at China Agricultural University (CAU) in July 2014. The fungus was cultured on PDA (potato dextrose agar) medium for 5 days at 25 °C, and then a slice of agar containing fungal hyphae was transferred to a 250 mL Erlenmeyer flask containing 150 mL of PDB (potato dextrose broth). The cultivation was performed in a rotatory shaker for another 7 days at 150 rpm and 25 °C to produce the seed culture, which was used to inoculate the autoclaved rice media in 1 L Erlenmeyer flasks each containing 100 g of rice and 110 mL of distilled water. The scale-up fermentation was carried out using a total of 4.5 kg of rice under static conditions at room temperature (RT) in the dark for 35 days.