Abstract
The antifungal activity of acetone, methanol, ethanol, chloroform, and water leaf extract of Zygophyllum coccineum was evaluated against Aspergillus flavus, Cladosporium sp., Alternaria alternate and Fusarium solani. The extracts exhibit numerous degree of inhibition pattern on tested fungal species. Well diffusion assay showed that in general methanol extract was highly effective against all the tested pathogens whereas, acetone and ethanol inhibited the tested pathogens moderately. While, the inhibitory effect of water extract was very weak on the tested fungi. However, Chloroform extract failed to inhibit F. solani and A. flavus. The pathogen Cladosporium sp. was observed to be most sensitive fungus and maximum growth was inhibited by methanol extract (36.0 mm). Percent growth reduction of plant pathogenic fungi evaluated by agar dilution showed that Methanol extract reduced maximum the mycelial growth of Cladosporium sp. (55%) followed by F. solani (53%), A. alternata (51%) and A. flavus (43.5%) respectively. The major chemicals detected in the methanolic extract were 1-Hexyl-2-nitrocyclexane (89.8%), 2-Octadecyl-propane-1,3-diol (88.9%), Octadecanal (88.6%) beside these several known terpenoids, saponins, phenols and glutaraldehyde (75.2%) were also present in the extract. Thus it can be concluded that Z. coccineum has the potential to be utilized as an antifungal agent.