Antifungal Activity of Onion and Garlic Extract for The Control of Aspergillus niger Isolated from Ghurki Village

Abstract

Fungi are cosmopolitan in distribution and have ability to grow in all sort of environmental conditions. They can colonize a wide variety of substrates and as pathogens responsible for various diseases in humans, plants and animals. It was also noticed various plant species has antimicrobial activities and they used to control fungal growth. In the present study samples of agricultural soil were collected from Ghurki village near Lahore and inoculated on Potato dextrose agar. Different Aspergillus species and mucor were observed however, only Aspergillus niger were collected, purified and assessed for inhibitory activity of onion and garlic. Both species belong to genus Allium. 250 grams of each peeled Allium species was taken and plant extracts were prepared in distilled water, ethanol (95.5) and acetone (95.5%) separately. The inhibitory effects of biological extracts were recorded at varying temperature, pH and incubation period. It was noticed inhibitory effect decreased with increase of temperature but no significant results seen for varying pH. Furthermore, an increase in antifungal activity was recorded for garlic extract compared to onion with incubation period (1-7 days). It was also concluded that garlic is best antifungal agent that has capability to reduce growth of Aspergillus niger with all three solutions and produce more pronounced effect with Alcoholic extract.