Antifungal properties of seeds Cassia tora Linn

Abstract

The antifungal activities of extracts in organic solvents from seeds of Cassia tora were tested. Based on the polarity, three organic solvents like Petroleum Ether, Chloroform and Methanol were used for preparing the extracts (1.0% and 1.5%) from the stem and seeds of C. tora against three common forest fungi viz. Colletotrichum gloeosporiodes, Fusarium oxysporum and Ganoderma lucidum. The inhibitory activity of all the extracts against three fungi remained consistently high in the chloroform extract i.e., 36.2%, 31.9% and 36.2% for C. gloeosporiodes, F. oxysporum and G. lucidum respectively; next effective reagent was Petroleum Ether. In general, higher concentration of extract (1.5%) was found to be more effective against all three fungi than lower concentration of 1.0%. Chloroform extract (1.5%) was found to be most suppressive of C. gloeosporiodes. (65.4 and 68.4%) than other fungi, while Petroleum Ether (1.5%) was found to be reasonably inhibitory (57.3%) to F. oxysporum. It may be concluded from these observations, that concentration of stem and seed extracts from C. tora may change the extent of fungal growth thus crucial to realistic screening.