Inhibitory effect of plant extracts against fungi of genus Aspergillus

QUIROGA, E.N.; SAMPIETRO, D.A.; VATTUONE, M.A.

Tucumán (Argentina)

Congreso; XXI Annual Meeting of Tucuman Biology Society; 2005

Tucuman Biology Society (publicado en Bio Cell 29 (1), 65, 2005)

Many moulds belonging to the genus Aspergillus, Fusarium and Penicillum are important agents in the biodeterioration of food, feeds and the raw material used in their manufacture. They can cause health problems to human or farm animals. In the present work we study the fungitoxic activity in vitro of EtOH extracts of six plants of the region against species of genus Aspergillus (A. parasiticus, A. flavus, A. nomius 13137 and A. nomius VSC23) isolated from farm animal feed. They are able to produce aflatoxins, probably responsible for liver necrosis and involved in the epidemeology of human liver cancer. The most fungitoxic extracts were Tripodanthus acutifolius and Larrea divaricata (76-89% and 36-54% of growth inhibition respectively), while Phytolacca dioica and Schinus molle extracts exhibited almost no activity against all the fungi assayed. MICs were determined by microdilution test and confirmed these results. We suggest that medicinal plants are promising resources of novel antifungal compounds applicable to food and feed preservatives.