Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology 30 (2020) 101848 Available online 2 November 2020 1878-8181/© 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Organic extracts of seeds of Iranian Moringa peregrina as promising selective biofungicide to control Mycogone perniciosa Danial Shokouhi a , Alireza Seifi a, * a Department of Biotechnology and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Agaricus bisporus Wet bubble disease Conidia Mushroom Essential oils Key message ABSTRACT Moringa peregrina is a medicinal plant with documented antifungal properties. Given the antifungal activity of the extracts of Moringa against different fungi, we tested the effects of organic and aqueous extracts of seeds of this plant species on mycopathogenic fungus, Mycogone perniciosa, and its host, Agaricus bisporus, the edible button mushroom. We added different concentrations of the extracts to potato dextrose agar media and monitored mycelial growth of M. perniciosa and A. bisporus. Results showed that all the extracts had antifungal activity against both fungi. Organic extract, hexane and chloroform, were more effective to control M. perniciosa, and at 1000 ppm concentration of these extracts, the growth was completely inhibited. Although the organic extracts resulted in growth reduction in A. bisporus, too, this effect was less severe and resulted in 29–31% growth reduction. We then tested the organic extracts on Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. solani, Rhizoctonia solani and Botrytis cinerea as the three phytopathogenic fungi. The mycelial growth of B. cinerea was completely inhibited by the extract, but there was no inhibitory effects on mycelial growth for the other two fungi. Thin layer chromatog- raphy revealed four distinct fractions in the hexane extract, from which fraction 3 resulted in reduction in growth of Mycogone. These preliminary in vitro assays suggest that while Moringa organic extracts inhibit mycelial growth of M. perniciosa effectively, they only reduce growth of A. bisporus, promising the extracts as selective biofungicides to be tested in vivo experiments. We present promising results to develop biofungicide to control wet bubble disease in edible mushroom. Our preliminary data show that organic extract of Moringa peregrina seeds contain antifungal compo- nents that inhibit mycelial growth of Mycogone perniciosa, the causal agent of wet bubble disease. Interestingly, the antifungal effects were not as severe on edible mushroom. 1. Introduction Reducing the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture is an impor- tant step towards sustainable agriculture. Apart from short and long term side effects of these chemical on human and environment, the emergence of resistant strains of pests and pathogens to the chemicals is turning to a serious problem now. Biological control, including using plant and microbial natural products, is a promising alternative for chemical control (Bardin and Pugliese, 2020; Barratt et al., 2018). Wet bubble disease, caused by the fungus Mycogone perniciosa, is an important cause of yield loss in edible button mushroom, Agaricus bis- porus (Preston et al., 2018). Infected mushrooms are fluffy and white at the initial stages of pin emergence and turn to brown as they age and decay. In the high relative humidity conditions, amber to dark brown droplets appear on the surface of affected and undifferentiated mush- room tissues, and therefore it is called wet bubble disease (Fletcher and Gaze, 2007; Li et al., 2019; Preston et al., 2018). Infected spawns and casing soils are the primary sources of Mycogone infection in mushroom farms, but the disease severity depends on relative humidity and tem- perature as well as pathogenicity level of Mycogone isolates. The disease can cause 10–46% and even, in some cases, to 100% loss of yield (Szumigaj-Tarnowska et al., 2015). M. perniciosa and A. bisporus are both fungi, and thus, developing selective controlling agents for M. perniciosa is challenging. Such selec- tive agent must be very effective against M. perniciosa with insubstantial effects on A. bisporus. Currently adopting clean farm practices and using uninfected casing soil, along with using chemical fungicides are the main controlling methods of this devastating disease. While emergence of resistance to fungicides is already a challenge, some of the effective fungicides, like carbendazim, are not allowed in some countries including in the EU (Gea et al, 2005, 2010; Potoˇ cnik et al., 2015). * Corresponding author. E-mail address: arseifi@um.ac.ir (A. Seifi). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/bab https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcab.2020.101848 Received 2 April 2020; Received in revised form 25 October 2020; Accepted 25 October 2020