Evaluation of Mycotoxic Potential of Some Higher Plants against Fusarium oxysporum F. Sp. L. causing Wilt in Linseed (Linum usitatisimum L.) RB SINGH, HK SINGH* AND ARPITA PARMAR 1 Department of Plant Pathology, ND University of Agriculture and Technology, Kumarganj, Faizabad- 224 229 (U.P.) India. ABSTRACT Linseed (Linum usitatisimum L.) is one of the major oilseed crops of India. The crop badly suffers by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. L. pathogen causing wilting. Fifty plant species belonging to different families were collected and evaluated for their mycotoxic potential against the pathogen in in vitro condition. All the 50 plant species showed the different level of toxicity. Among them leaf extract of Xanthium strumanium (Kanghi) and Tribulus terrestris (Gokhru) exhibited maximum toxicity and inhibited the mycelial growth of fungus upto 81.18% and 77.66%, respectively. Rest of the plant also showed variable per centage of inhibition from 10.55 to 65.74% as compared to untreated check. Keywords : Mycotoxic, higher plant, Fusarium oxysporum, wilt, linseed 1 T.H.S. Kishan P.G. College, Bahraich (U.P.) India. *Corresponding Author E-mail : hksndu@gmail.com INTRODUCTION Despite of the use of all available means for plant protection, about one third of the yearly harvest of the world is destroyed by the pests. The discovery of the synthetic pesticides and the subsequent development of different groups of synthetic chemicals have contributed greatly to increase of food production indirectly by controlling pests. However, the use of these chemicals raised the number of ecological and medical problems. Most of the pesticides degraded very slowly by atmospheric and biological factors and this lead to the development of resistant strain among the pest, on one hand, to the contamination of environment and food chain on the other thereby causing serious ecological imbalance. Green plants because of their vast diversities contain wide spectrum of plant defense chemical, most of which make a vital contribution to the list of medicine. The use of plant extract for the control of plant diseases caused by fungi did not received proper attention of pathologist/botanist. Only few possessing microbial activity were tried for the control of plant diseases (Dixit et al., 1983, Dube et al., 1983, Singh et al., 1983, Dixit and Dube, 1992, Pande et al. 2002). Most of the fungicides commonly used to minimized losses caused by fungal diseases inter the food chain (Majumdar, 1972), resulting in several harmful effect. Therefore, there is constant need for an extensive search for new, effective and harmless fungicides. Plants provide such source of natural product which exhibit strong anti-microbial properties. In present investigation plants belongs to30 families of Angiosperm were screened for their toxicity against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lini . MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty plant species (Table 1) were collected from the N.D. University of Agriculture and Technology, Kumarganj campus and neighboring areas. Leaves and other parts were serially washed thoroughly with fresh water, sterilized water and then 70% ethanol, chopped and the extracted with sterilized distilled water (1:1 w/v) to obtain a stock solution. Mycotoxicity of the extracts against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lini for the inhibition was determined by “Poisoned food technique” (Grover ARTICLE INFO Received on : 15.01.2014 Revised received on : 21.02.2014 Accepted on : 09.03.2014 Published online : 27.03.2014 ISSN : 2348-8808 (Print ), 2348-8867 (Online) Journal of AgriSearch 1(1):26-29