Investigation of Endophytic Fungi Associated with Bixa orellana L., a Medicinal Plant Collected from Western Ghats of Sathyamangalam - A First Report

Abstract

Surface Sterilization of the plant material:The method most frequently utilized to detect and quantify endophytes involves isolation from surface-sterilized host plant tissues. Endophytic isolation was carried out under aseptic conditions. Different symptomless parts of the selected medicinal plants such as stem cuttings, leaves, and roots were used for the isolation of endophytes.The collected medicinal plant samples should be healthy and cleaned thoroughly in gentle running tap water AbstractMycoendophytes are microorganisms that reside internal tissues of living plants without causing any immediate overt negative effects, have been found in every plant species examined to date and recognized as the potential sources of novel natural products for exploitation in medicine, and agriculture with more bioactive natural products isolated from the microorganisms. In the past two decades, many valuable bioactive compounds with antimicrobial, insecticidal, cytotoxic, and anticancer activities have been successfully discovered from mycoendophytes. In the present investigation, endophytic fungi were screened form from stem, twig and leaves of Bixa orellanaL. collected form Sathyamangalam reserve forest. Predominant endophytic fungi isolated from the medicinal plantare Phyllosticta sp., Pestalotiopsis sp., and Phomopsis sp. Statistical analysis of Shannon Diversity Index, Jaccard Similarity Coefficient, and Endophytic Infection Rate were performed to understand the nature of mycophytes in the selected medicinal plant. This is the first report on endophytic fungi documented from this medicinal plant from Sathyamangalam forest of Tamil nadu, India.Keywords: Mycoendopytes; Jaccard similarity coefficient; Endophytic infection rate; Shannon diversity index

Endophyte Chaetomium, Potential Bioactivity: Pharmaceutical and Phytochemical Analyses

“…Several studies, including our own research, have con rmed the noteworthy biological properties of metabolites produced by endophytic fungi. These metabolites have demonstrated potential for therapeutic applications, such as anticancer, antimicrobial, antiviral, antitumor, antidiabetic, cholesterol-inhibiting, and antioxidant activities (Kannan et al, 2017a;Eskander et al, 2020;Elkhouly et al, 2021). Moreover, Vijayalakshmi et al (2016) stated that fungus endophytes have gained signi cant recognition as a valuable source of essential and innovative pharmacological biomolecules with economic implications.…”

Surface sterilization for isolation of endophytes: Ensuring what (not) to grow

“…A simple and direct way for testing the effectiveness of surface sterilization methods and hence, the confirmation of microbial isolates as endophytes, is the lack of microbial growth on culture media upon plating the last rinse [70]. Furthermore, the choice and concentration of chemicals largely depends on tissue type [37,71,72]. However, some workers uniformly use surface sterilization protocol, irrespective of the tissue type [25,57].…”

Bixa orellana L. (achiote) tissue culture: a review

“…The compounds that have been used for explant decontamination to establish achiote in vitro cultures, as listed in Table 1, are suitable only for the surface disinfection of different explants. However, only recently were a series of endophyte species isolated from different organs of B. orellana, including stems, leaves, twigs, and flowers (Kannan et al 2017), several of which are frequently used to prepare explants for in vitro culture.…”