Cold-active Moulds from Jammu and Kashmir, India as Potential Source of Cold-active Enzymes

Cold-active moulds have been isolated from the soil of ten selected sites of Jammu and Kashmir (India) in the winter season. Most of them turned out to be psychrotolerant except BPF-5 and BPF-6 which showed defective growth above 20oC, and thus were identified as psychrophilic moulds. BPF-5 was also found to form sexual structure at 4oC, while BPF-6 formed melanaceous filaments in old culture. The isolate BPF-5 has been identified as Truncatella angustata and BPF-6 as Psudogymnoascus sp. Among psychrotolerant moulds, the species of Cladosporium and Penicillium were found to be dominant taxa in terms of frequency and number of species while Rhizomucor sp., to be the most prolific mould under in vitro culture. Many of them formed adaptive structures and pigment.  All of these isolates were able to utilize starch, cellulose, casein and tween-80 while many of them were able to use pectin and carboxy methyl cellulose (CMC) as sole carbon source at 4oC suggesting that they might be important sources of cold-adapted enzymes and other biomolecules. Although α-amylase from all the isolates showed residual cold-activity, that from BPF-6 exhibited the highest one suggesting it to be further explored for biotechnological applications

Antagonistic Potentiality of Trichoderma harzianum Against Cladosporium spherospermum, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium oxysporum

Many species of genus Trichoderma are used as an important source of biological agents. The potential efficacy of Trichoderma harzianum against the pathogenic fungi like Cladosporium spherospermum, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium oxysporum was evaluated on the fungal growth by culture pattern in which radial growth extension rates of two categories of fungal colonies were analyzed. All the fungal species were isolated from the rhizosphere of Juglans regia L. and cultured on the separate sterilized potato dextrose agar (Hi Media). Antagonism of T. harzianum was observed when all the fungal isolates were grown on the same PDA petri-plate in vitro by using the dual culture techniques. Trichoderma harzianum had a discernible inhibitory effect on the growth of pathogens in dual culture. The mycelial growth of pathogenic isolates was noticeably constrained after a period of 10 days at the temperature of 250C and pH of 5.6. T. harzianum caused the maximum growth inhibition in A. niger (75%) followed by C. spherospermum (72.2%) and F. oxysporum (25%) at the specific temperature and pH, which justifies that T. harzianum is a promising biological agent for restricting the wilt and other fungal diseases. Keywords; Trichoderma harzianum, pathogenic fungi, antagonism, radial growt

International Journal of Pharma and Bio Sciences RESEARCH ARTICLE BOTANY ETHNO-MEDICINAL SURVEY OF KAJINAAG RANGE OF KASHMIR

The research work was carried out around the selected areas of Kajinaag range. The study was aimed to document the traditional folk knowledge of local people about the use of medicinal plants as ethno-medicines. The methodology includes questionnaire survey and personal communications. The ethno- medicinal data on 26 plant species belonging to 23 families were recorded during field expeditions from remote villages around Kajinaag range. The data was arranged alphabetically by family name followed by botanical name, vernacular name, part used, folk use and recipes. The plant species were collected identified, preserved and deposited under proper collectio