Abstract

ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF PLANT EXTRACT OF TRACHYSPERMUM AMMI, ON ENDOPHYTIC FUNGI ISOLATED FROM SCHLEICHERA OLEOSA (KUSUM)

Pooja Shree Prasad and Dr. Shweta Sao*

Abstract

Endophytic fungi colonize living plant tissues without producing any apparent disease symptoms or obvious negative effects infect they are responsible for producing many secondary metabolites. Schleichera oleosa (Kusum) is well known tree of medicinal importance in India. All parts of Kusum are used in Indian Traditional Healing. Various part of kusum tree are either favorite pick of traditional vaids for indigenous therapies and medicine or timber, food, animal feed, and oil. In spite of these properties, kusum is not free from microbial diseases. Many fungal and bacterial pathogens were reported to infect it. In the present study, endophytic fungi isolated from the leaves of Schleichera oleosa (Kusum). In all total eight fungi were isolated out of which antifungal activity of the organic solvent extracts(ethanol/ methanol) and hot water extract of Trachyspermum ammi at different concentrations i.e. 25%,50%,75%,100% was tested against; test fungi Fusarium sp.. The growth of the test fungi was inhibited by all the concentrations of extract prepared in hot water and methanol with maximum inhibition by 100% concentration, whereas higher concentrations of ethanol showed the inhibitory effect.

Keywords: Entophytic fungi, Fusarium, Kusum and Inhibitory effect.