BIO-EFFICACY OF BRYOPHYTE EXTRACTS AGAINST PATHOGENIC FUNGI

: Nature has been a source of medicinal agents for thousands of years and an impressive number of modern drugs have been isolated from plant sources. Bryophytes are known to posses antifungal metabolites. These plants have widely been used as medicinal plants since ancient times and are not infected by bacteria and fungi as they use chemical weapons in the form of secondary metabolites. In order to evaluate the antifungal activity of bryophytes, the present study was performed which deals with phytochemical screening to find out the presence of potent antifungal substances and its effect in crude form against Curvularia lunata the causal organism of leaf spot of wheat. In this study the preliminary tests showed that flavonoids, phenols, terpenoids, sterols etc. are present in test plant. Different types of extracts were tested against selected test fungi as antimicrobial assay through hanging drop method. The results showed that all the extracts possess good antifungal activity but the highest inhibition in spore germination per cent was observed in methanolic extract. The percentage of germination was 57.78 to 22.22 from 10 to 100 per cent concentrations of the extract.