Antifungal-Screening and Eco-friendly Botanical Fungicide Development

Fungal infection on plants, directly affect the yield. Moreover, they affect the quality of produce and often make it unhealthy by producing harmful mycotoxins. In this context, ready-to-market commodity fruits and vegetables are highly susceptible to microbiological infestations, even during production with available most advanced. Improper post-harvest handling too results in over 20% fungal decay post-harvest losses. As International agencies monitoring world food resources have acknowledged to reduce plant diseases and post-harvest losses to match future food needs. Thus, in order to combat the harmful effect that has been exhibited by synthetic chemical fungicides, botanical extracts can be successfully implemented to prevent the fungal deterioration, decay and to protect crops including prolonged storage life of perishables. In the present study, plants extracts showing broad-spectrum antifungal activity and being effective at a low concentration, were used in formulating a botanical fungicide. Such formulations containing a mixture of plant extracts are known to have broad-spectrum effect. Moreover, the mixture may have synergistic effect with unique mode of action.