Natural Compounds: A Sustainable Alternative to the Phytopathogens Control

Abstract

Fungi are the primary infectious agents in plants causing significant economic losses in agroindustry. Traditionally, these pathogens have been treated with different synthetic fungicides such as hydroxianilides, anilinopyrimidines, and azoles, to name a few. However, the indiscriminate use of these chemicals has increased fungi resistance in plants. Natural products have been researched as a control, and an alternative to these synthetic fungicides since they are not harmful to health and contribute to the environment caring. This review describes plants extracts, essential oils, and active compounds or secondary metabolites as antifungal agents both, in vitro and in vivo. Active compounds have been recently described as the best candidates for the control of phytopathogenic fungi. When metabolized by plants, these compounds concentrations rely on the environmental conditions and pathogens incidence. However, one issue regarding the direct application of these preformed compounds in plants touch upon their low persistence in the environment, and their even lower bioavailability than synthetic fungicides. Hence the challenge is to develop useful formulations based on natural products to increase the compounds solubility facilitating thus their application in the field while maintaining their properties.

Heterologous Production of β-Caryophyllene and Evaluation of Its Activity against Plant Pathogenic Fungi

“…In this context, plant metabolites are a rich source of bioactive compounds explorable for the use of preventing and controlling plant pathogenic microbes. In the last decade, several studies investigated terpenoids as potential antiphytopathogenic compounds [ 67 , 71 , 76 , 77 , 107 , 108 ]. β-caryophyllene is a natural bicyclic sesquiterpene that is a constituent of many essential oils.…”

Exploring the potential of using bioactive plant products in the management of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. albedinis: the causal agent of Bayoud disease on date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.)

“…Diverse mechanisms can underlie fungal toxicity of plant secondary metabolites including the inhibition of enzymes by oxidized compounds, probably by reactions with sulfhydryl groups or by less specific interactions with proteins, interference with cell wall synthesis, alteration of cell permeability, interference with electron transport, absorption of nutrients, adenosine triphosphatase, and other cell metabolic pathways [33][34][35]. Bioactive compounds found in plant extracts may act simultaneously or separately, their modes of action can be similar or different, and their targets include metabolic pathways involved in mycelial growth, sporulation, and spore germination, which result in effective antifungal activity [36].…”

Potential Use of L-arabinose for the Control of Tomato Bacterial Wilt

“…This may be due to differences in the bacterial strains used and/or experimental conditions. Previous studies reported the in vitro and in planta suppressive effects of natural organic compounds against various plant pathogens, including bacterial wilt pathogen (Posas and Toyota, 2010;Llorens et al, 2017;Kim et al, 2018;Jiménez-Reyes et al, 2019;Jamiołkowska, 2020). However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to report the control of tomato bacterial wilt by L-arabinose.…”