Isolation and identification of Bacillus spp. from Syrian soils and testing their antifungal activity against Botrytis Cinerea in vitro

الملخص EN

Three hundred seventy eight isolates of Bacillus spp.

from Syrian soils were screened in vitro for their ability to inhibit the growth of Botrytis cinerea, agent of gray mold disease.

The B307 isolate showed the highest antagonism activity with growth inhibition of 68%.

In addition, B307 had chitinolytic activity, and the fraction from the isolate with more than 50KDa of its cell free crude extract showed the highest chitinolytic and antagonism activity against B.

cinerea.

This isolate was identified as Bacillus licheniformis according to the 16S DNA gene sequencing data with homology of 99%.

The results of this study demonstrated that Bacillus licheniformis B307 and its free cell crude extract could be used as bio-control agent against Botrytis cinerea.