|
PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Fungal phytopathogen infection in cultivation of economically important crops is the major problem faced worldwide. Use of fungicide is causing deleterious effect to ecosystem including plants and humans. Currently scientists are searching for an alternative environment friendly technique to protect plants from fungal attack. The presences of chitin in the cell wall of fungus lead to the search of chitinase enzyme as potent bio-control agent. Chitinase help in the degradation of chitin to N-acetyl glucosamine. In this paper we search for potent chitinolytic Actinobacters from soil collected from a sacred grove in Kerala. Among the fourteen isolates made, four exhibited chitinolytic activity. Molecular analysis technique together with traditional morphological and biochemical methods was used for the identification of strains and all strains identified as Streptomyces species of this two identified as potent fungal chitinase producers. The Streptomyces KAZ 180 observed to have antifungal activity against Aspergillus niger MTCC 1344 with chitinase activity of 2.48µM/ml and Streptomyces KAZ 312with1.75µM/ml. Both the stain observed to have F-19 gene based on the primer designed from conserved regions of Fungal -19 chitinase gene of Streptomyces sp.