Abstract
In order to identify natural products for plant disease control, the essential oil of star anise (Illicium verum Hook. f.) fruit was investigated for its antifungal activity on plant pathogenic fungi. The fruit essential oil obtained by hydro-distillation was analyzed for its chemical composition by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). trans-Anethole (89.5%), 2-(1-cyclopentenyl)-furan (0.9%) and cis-anethole (0.7%) were found to be the main components among 22 identified compounds, which accounted for 94.6% of the total oil. The antifungal activity of the oil and its main component trans-anethole against plant pathogenic fungi were determined. Both the essential oil and trans-anethole exhibited strong inhibitory effect against all test fungi indicating that most of the observed antifungal properties was due to the presence of trans-anethole in the oil, which could be developed as natural fungicides for plant disease control in fruit and vegetable preservation.
Highlights
Plant diseases are usually caused by plant pathogens including fungi, nematodes, bacteria, and viruses, among which fungi are the main pathogens, causing great yield losses in numerous important crops [1,2]
In order to compare the antifungal activity of trans-anethole with that of I. verum essential oil, transanethole was detected to display similar inhibitory activity on the test fungi with IC50 values closed to those of the oil (Table 2), which suggested that trans-anethole was a major contributor to the antifungal properties of I. verum essential oil
Namely Alternaria solani, Bipolaris maydis, Botryodiplodia theobromae, Fusarium graminearum, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cucumerinum, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum, Magnaporthe oryzae, Pythium aphanidermatum, Rhizoctonia cerealis, and Rhizoctonia solani were kindly provided by the Department of Plant Pathology of China Agricultural University
Summary
Plant diseases are usually caused by plant pathogens including fungi, nematodes, bacteria, and viruses, among which fungi are the main pathogens, causing great yield losses in numerous important crops [1,2]. Plant essential oils are used as fragrance and flavouring agents in the food and beverages industries [11], and may provide potential alternatives for use as plant fungal pathogenic control agents [12,13] as a large number of plant essential oils have been reported to have antifungal activities [14,15,16,17,18]. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no detailed studies on the use of I. verum essential oil and its main component trans-anethole against plant pathogenic fungi, besides a few reports on the antifungal activity screening of the oil [21,23]. We report here the antifungal activity of I. verum essential oil and trans-anethole against plant pathogenic fungi in order to provide additional data in supporting of their utilization and development as fungicides for plant disease control
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