Antifungal activity of essential oil from Santolina pectinata lag., against postharvest phytopathogenic fungi in apples

The purpose of this study was to investigate the chemical composition and antifungal activities of essential oil (EO) of Santolina pectinata aerial parts. The analysis of EO using gas chromatography (GC-FID) and gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) allowed the identification of 34 components, which (Z)-heptadeca-10,16-dien-7-one was the major constituent with 28 % of the total oil. The antifungal activities of this oil in liquid and vapor-phase against three phytopathogenic fungi causing the deterioration for apples, including Botrytis cinerea, Penicillium expansum and Rhizopus stolonifer were evaluated in vitro by using the poisoned food (PF) and the volatile activity (VA) methods. The obtained results showed a significant inhibition of the studied EO inhibited significatively against the mycelial growth of all fungal strains tested (p<0.05). B. cinerea and P. expansum showed a strong sensitivity to the studied oil at all concentrations and VA assay was consistently found to be more effective than PF technique. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of this oil were 0. 25 and 1 µL/mL against these strains when using VA and PF assays, respectively. The overall results suggest that S. pectinata EO could be used as an antifungal preservative to control post-harvest diseases of apples. The antifungal activities of S. pectinata EO from Morocco are reported for the first time