Nigrospora sphaerica collected on living leaves of Celtis australis L. (Cannabaceae) from Himachal Pradesh, India is a new host record. Symptoms of the disease on leaves appeared in the form of small, circular to irregular, brown - coloured spots surrounded by a yellow zone. The fungus isolated was identified as Nigrospora sphaerica (Sacc.) E.W. Mason, on the basis of cultural and morphological characters. The fungus is described and illustrated.
A severe white rot decay of a very old mango (Mangifera indica L.) tree trunk was observed form Himachal Pradesh, a hilly state of north India. The initial of decaying symptoms were firstly noticed in 2010 which progressed with destructive tissue death of tree trunk. A spongy, sessile, bracket-fungus was found associated with the decay. Morphological and microscopic examination of the collected specimens confirmed the fungus as Phellinus gilvus (Schw.) Pat. Since, P. gilvus is a saprobic fungus having a wide host range worldwide and M. indica is one of the most attacked hosts in India. Therefore, the present report is an important addition to the existing knowledge which will be helpful in understanding the pathogen diversity and interaction with host.
Severe leaf spot disease was observed on Aloe vera plants in the winters of 2011 and 2012 during a survey of various nurseries of Gwalior, India. Irregular, sunken, dark creamish brown spots having reddish brown margin were noticed on both surfaces of the leaves. The causal organism was consistently isolated from symptomatic leaves on potato dextrose agar media (PDA). A total 59 isolates of fungi were recovered from diseased A. vera leaves, and 37 isolates were identified as belonging to the genus Fusarium. On the basis of morphological characteristics and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of rDNA amplified using the primers ITS4/ITS5 the pathogen was identified as Fusarium proliferatum (Matsushima) Nirenberg and pathogenicity of the isolate was confirmed by using Koch’s postulates. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of leaf spot disease caused by Fusarium proliferatum on A. vera plants in India.
An enzyme-assisted modified steam distillation process was adopted to extract turmeric oil from Curcuma longa L. rhizomes. The diastase, xylose, cellulase, pectinase, and lipase enzymes were used for the pre-treatment of fresh turmeric rhizome to obtain a higher yield by rapturing biological cells. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of turmeric oil was performed by GC–MS. The various influencing parameters for the extraction of turmeric oil such as an enzyme, incubation/pre-treatment time, distillation time have been studied in the present work. The obtained turmeric oil by enzymatic pretreatment process is richer in bioactive/medicinal components than in the other traditional methods. The maximum yield was obtained with cellulase enzyme, which is 25–27% higher than the yield obtained by the traditional hydro distillation process. The detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses are also presented. The present method can be considered energy-efficient, effective, economical, and eco-friendly.
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