Agriculture provides livelihoods for 40% of worldwide population1
. Due to the
rapid human population growth, it is estimated that global food production will need to
increase by 60% to feed over 9.8 billion people by 20502
. The use of pesticides contributes
to high crop yields and effective farm management3
. Globally, 4.6 million tons of
chemical pesticides are sprayed into the environment every year4,5. Out of the total
consumption of pesticides, 17.5% are in the form of fungicides5
. Although efficient, these
chemical controls have undesirable characteristics, such as the development of pathogen
resistance, environmental pollution, long degradation periods, bioaccumulation in the
food chain and toxicity to non-target organisms6
. Therefore, alternative paths to the
intensive use of crop protection chemicals are needed, such as the use of natural products
which are effective, biodegradable and leave no harmful residues.
Propolis is a natural resinous mixture made by honeybees (particularly Apis
mellifera L.) from various plant sources and bee wax. Hundreds of different compounds
have been identified so far in propolis, including several bioactive compounds such as
flavonoids and phenolic acids and terpene derivatives, generally associated to its
antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and antioxidant activities, among others7
.
Previous work showed that propolis ethanol extracts (EEs) can be explored as
source of biofungicides for application in a sustainable agriculture management 8. In this
study we evaluated the antifungal activity of EEs from Portuguese propolis samples
against a range of phytopathogenic fungal species that affect economically important
crops in Portugal. Interestingly, results showed that different propolis samples have
distinct fungitoxic activities but also that different fungi species exhibit distinct
susceptibilitiesFEDER/COMPETE/POCI– Operational
Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme, under Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006958 and
National Funds by FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project
UID/AGR/04033/201
