Isolation and Treatment of Pathogens Infecting Germplasm of Chlorophytum Borivilianum, Santa PAU & Fernandes with Chemotherapeutic Agents

Chlorophytum borivilianum (Liliaceae), commonly known as Safed musli is a traditional, rare and endangered Indian medicinal herb having many therapeutic applications in Ayurvedic, Unani, Homeopathic and Allopathic systems of medicine. Its storage roots are widely used to cure various sex related diseases because they contain steroidal and triterpenoidal saponins, sapogenins and fructans. It is a rich source of several alkaloids, steroids, phenols, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrate, potassium, calcium, magnesium, resins, and mucilage and also contains high quantity of simple sugars. The present communication deals with the isolation, identification and antimicrobial treatment of those microorganisms which damage the germplasm of medically valuable herb. The planting materials i.e., the fleshy roots bearing shoot buds were stored in perforated polythene bags filled with sand. During storage the tubers were infected with pathogens and almost 20% of germplasm was damaged. The infected fingers became hollow, turned dark brown with thin, wrinkled and disintegrating outer membrane. Isolations were done both for fungi and bacteria on PDAand NA media but colonies appeared only on the PDA plates. Two fungal pathogens, namely species of Fusarium and Aspergillus were isolated and characterized. To evaluate the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic agents on the colony growth, four fungicides namely Bavistin, Captan, Fluconazole and Trichoderma with four different concentrations (5, 10, 15 and 20 mgl-l) were used separetly and minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were determined. It was observed that all the fungicides exhibited positive response on the growth of the isolated fungal strains, but Bavistin (10 mgl-l) and Captan (15 mgl-l) appeared to be most effective and should be used to store the germplasm for the next crop.