Medicinal Plants Farming Affects Many Fungal Diseases

 

     Medicinal plants are considered as rich resources of ingredients which can be used in drug development.  Apart from medicinal uses, they are also used in natural dye, pest control, food, perfumes, and tea and so on. It also reduces such as diarrhea, constipation, hypertension, low sperm count, dysentery, piles, coated tongue, menstrual disorders, bronchial asthma etc. Most of the medicinal plants get diseased because of this, there is an economic loss caused as well as it also affects the diversity of rare, endangered, endemic, native, vulnerable plant species.

 

            Medicinal plants have long played important roles in the treatment of diseases all over the world. Medicinal plants are a source for a wide variety of natural antioxidants and are used for the treatment of diseases throughout the world. Some of these properties are antimicrobial, anticancer, antidiabetic, antiantherosclerosis, immunomodulatory and even renoprotection or hepatoprotective effects. 

 

Most of the medicinal plants have specific compounds other than antioxidants, which are effective in the treatment or prevention of diseases. In this regard medicinal plants have also been a reliable source of preparation of new drugs.  The herbal products today symbolize safety in contrast to the synthetics that are regarded as unsafe to human and environment. There are 2, 50,000 higher plant species on earth, more than 80,000 are medicinal. India is one of the word’s 12 biodiversity centres with the presence of over 45,000 different plant species.   In India, drugs of herbal origin have been used in traditional systems of medicines such as Unani and Ayurveda, since ancient times.  The drugs are derived either from the whole plant or from different organs, like leaves, stem, bark, root, flower, seed etc.   Some drugs are prepared from excretory plant products such as gum, resin, and latex.  Even the Allopathic system of medicine has adopted a number of plant derived drugs. Some important chemical intermediates needed for manufacturing the modern drugs are also obtained from plants.

 

                         India is floristically rich and ranking 10^th among the plant resources rich nations of the world and 4th among the countries of Asia. India is the 7th largest country in the world and Asia’s 2nd largest nation with an area of 3,287,263 Sq.Km. and is an example of diverse ecosystems.  Damping-off disease is caused by a soil-borne fungus Rhizoctonia solani that attacks germinated seedlings that have not yet emerged or have just emerged.  Damping-off of seedling is very common all over the world.  It occurs in agriculture and forest soils, in tropical and temperate climates and in almost every greenhouse or nursery.  Damping-off can be of two types, that is, pre-emergence damping-off in which the seeds and radical rot before the seedlings emerge from the soil and the post -emergence damping-off  in which the newly emerged seedlings are killed at ground level after they emerge from the soil, causing them to collapse.  This is a common symptom of post- emergence damping-off.

 

 Medicinal plants are also suffered fungal diseases like any other food and fodder crops but are not given that much of importance likes other commercially important crops.  Medicinal plants also causes diseases such as damping-off seedling, seedling blight, root rot, stem rot, leaf spot diseases etc.  There are various types of fungal diseases of herbal medicinal plants viz. Phytophthora stem blight and root rot. Aerial stem blight and root rot are caused by Phytophthora nicotianae and occasionally other species.  Pythium root rot, this pathogen doesn’t cause branch blight, only root rot and damping-off of seedlings.  Rhizoctonia stem and root rot, Rhizoctonia species sometimes causes stem rot turn yellow, wilt and collapse.  Affected plants are stunted; their roots have brown lesions, leaves turns yellow and plants wilt even when soil moisture is sufficient.  Gray-mold Botrytis Blight, this disease caused by Botrytis cineria is seen occasionally during cool, moist spring weather.  The pathogen usually builds-up on dead plant parts and disease develops when these come into contact with living tissue.  Symptoms progress rapidly and can include leaf spots and blights, stem cankers, stem rots and damping-off of seedlings.  Black root rot, is caused by the fungus Thielaviopsis basicola.  The major root problems in Asparagus include Fusarium crown and root rot and Phytophthora rot.  Damping-off disease is caused by soil-borne fungus Rhizoctonia solani that attacks germinated seedlings that have not yet emerged or have just emerged.  Fennel crop suffer from many diseases causing by fungi pathogens, such as Rhizoctonia solani, Pythium aphanidermatum, Cercospora sp., Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Alternaria alternate and Fusarium oxysporum.

There are various medicinal plants occurred such as Adhatoda zeylanica, Aegle marmelos, Areca catechu, Azadirachta indica, Asparagus racemosus, Withania somnifera, Bidens pilosa, Butea monosperma, Calotropis gigantea, Canna indica, Cassia tora, Cleom viscosa, Emblica officinalis, Saraca asoca, Phyllanthous amarus(Bhumi Amla), Bacopa monnieri (Brahmi), Swirtia chiraita(Chiraita), Gymnema sylvestre (Gudmar), Commiphora wightii (Guggul), Tinospora cordifolia(Gulvel), Gloriosa superb(Calihari), Andrographis paniculata (Kalmegh, Bhui neem), Solanum nigrum (Makoi), Rauvolfia serpentina ( Sarpagandha), Casia augstifolia (Senna), Ocimum sanctum (Tulsi), Mentha piperita(Peppermint) Lawsonia innermis ( Henna, Mehndi), Aloe vera(Korphad), Catharanthus roseus (Periwinkle,Sadafuli), Plumbago zeylanica (Swet Chitrak), Strychinos nuxvomica (Kochila), Terminalia chebula (Hirda), Terminalia bellerica (Behda), Tribulus terrestris (Gokhru), Macuna pruriens ( Khajkuhili) etc.

 

Most of the medicinal plants dies because of disease attack.  There are many reasons to cause diseases viz- air-borne fungi, weather change, soil-borne fungi etc. Very few information is available about the incidence, prevalence, epidemiology, and management of medicinal plants diseases.  There is little information or research work is available on diseases of medicinal plants.   The amount of damage the disease causes to plant is depends on the fungus, host tolerance/susceptibility, soil moisture and temperature.  Seedlings may die before or after they emerge from the soil (pre-emergence and post-emergence damping-off respectively).  Seedlings in seedbeds often are completely destroyed by damping-off or they die after transplanting.  Hence, try to investigate ecofriendly management practices hence it will reduces the hazardous effects causes by the environmentally harmful management practices.  In that uses of Biorational pesticides; these pesticides are defined as products that are considered to be environmentally friendly because they have minimal harmful effects on non-target organisms and the environment; they are frequently more “user friendly” than traditional pesticides (Biochemicals which include plant products such as essential oils and various compounds synthesized by other organisms such as chitin and chitosan).  Indeed, these biopesticides present many advantages in term of sustainability, mode of action and toxicity compared to chemical pesticides.  By using antagonism or biological pesticides it is also called as antibiosis-these pesticides are living agents that are also called biological control agents.  For example, by using certain bacteria, fungi it can be controlled ecofriendly.  But including these things there are certain drawbacks of biocontroling agent, is that, they are having certain limitations means they resist the growth of pathogen at the certain level while biocontroling agents are affected by environmental changes but on the other hand chemical fungicides does not affected by environmental changes hence, try to uses of chemical fungicides that causes minimal effect on host and its residual affects does not persist for long period.  Majority of herbal medicinal plants dies due to disease attack and it losses generally on the nursery bed whenever economic losses takes place because the whole plant get destroyed .  Hence, to overcome this problem after transplantations and avoid the economic losses.