Antifungal activity of India costus water roots extracts against fungal isolates from post-harvest tomato in El Khoms, Libya

Abstract EN

Tomato fruits suffer decay as a result of postharvest infestation by several pathogens particularly fungal pathogens.

Thus, the fungal rot of tomato under storage conditions was studied.

This study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of water roots extracts of Indian costus against post-harvest fungal rot of tomato fruit.

Samples of tomato fruits were collected from different markets in EL khoms, Libya.

The fungal pathogen was isolated and identified by morphological characteristics and compared with established keys as; Rhizopus sp, Mucor sp, Penicillium sp, Alternaria sp and Fuzarium sp.

The study was also undertaken to observe the antifungal activity of water extracts of the dried roots of Indian Costus, which, were scored on the measurement of inhibition zone, it is revealed that all the tested fungus exhibited susceptibility to cold and hot water extracts.

Most the concentrations on the cold and hot extracts showed concentration dependent zones inhibition of fungus growth.

The inhibition zones with the hot extract at 60 mg/ml were ranged from 31 to 34 mm showed the best antifungal against Penicillum sp at 34 mm.

in contrast with that the cold extract showed the best antifungal against Alternaria sp at 30mm.

Moreover, the study of the effect of the extracts on dry weight on the isolated fungi show that, Alternaria sp was the most sensitive to the water extracts on both hot and cold condition.

However in the hot extract was more sensitive than in cold extract.