Abstract

Pavithra G., Surendra S., Ramkumar R, *B. K. Nayak and A. Nanda

ABSTRACT

Soil fungi are generally very reachable to different sources and their involvement in providing the basic needs for bioprospecting. Rhizosphere micro fungi are considered as significant decomposers in the root ecosystems, ensuring the assimilation of dead plants and animals into smaller molecules that can be used by other organisms of the soil ecosystem. During the present study, rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soils of the plant, Plectranthus rotundifolius Poir. were studied to record the prevalence of fungal communities. Rhizosphere soil was dominated (81%) with the fungal flora than Non-rhizosphere (19%) in our study. Aspergillus niger was found as the dominant one in Rhizosphere soil but Penicillium chrysogenum was the dominant one in Non-rhizosphere soil. The results obtained clearly indicated that Aspergillus awamori, A. flavus, A. terreus, Aspergillus niger, White sterile mycelia, Gray sterile mycelia and Penicillium citrinum were recorded at different concentration in both the soils. Among the isolates Aspergillus and white sterile mycelia were dominant in all the soil conditions due to high sporulation capacity. Quantitatively, the rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soils contributed 3000 and 1000 fungal spores respectively in their environments. Antimicrobial properties of the active grown agar plug of the isolated dominant fungi were found very good against all the pathogens but Klebsiella sp. and Pseudomonas sp. were found as more susceptible towards the fungal extracts in comparison to other bacteria and Candida albicans, the later one was the third susceptible microbe among all.