ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

V. Anuradha and K. Revathi
Department of Zoology, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai- 600 008, India.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2011;5(1):87-96
© The Author(s). 2011
Received: 28/09/2010 | Accepted: 22/11/2010 | Published: 30/04/2011
Abstract

Six Chitin degrading bacterial species were identified and isolated from shells of crustacean samples namely Prawns and Crab shells. The isolates were screened on the basis of their formation of clearance zone in Colloidal chitin agar plate. The chitinolytic strains obtained were assessed for their antifungal potential against the three fungal strains namely Fusarium Oxysporum, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus. The fungal growth inhibition by the bacterial strains that is likely to be due to the secretion of  extracellular hydrolytic enzymes is observed on Potato Dextrose Agar Plate for a duration of 24-72 hours. The pure chitinase extracted from these bacterial samples were assessed for the lysis of fungi and formation of protoplast. Of the various fungal species, Fusarium oxysporum and Aspergillus flavus showed the highest sensitivity to all the chitinase producing bacterial isolates. Aspergillus niger showed resistivity against most of the bacterial strains with an exception of V.aestuarianus. Further, different strains showed different degree of antagonism towards various phyto pathogens.

Keywords

Microbial Chitinase, Antifungal activity, Fusarium oxysporum, Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus

Article Metrics

Article View: 836

Share This Article

© The Author(s) 2011. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.