Agricultural and Biological Sciences Journal Vol. 1, No. 3, 2015, pp. 71-75 http://www.publicscienceframework.org/journal/absj * Corresponding author E-mail address: tabdelghany@yahoo.com (T. M. Abd El-Ghany) Efficacy of Certain Plant Extracts as Safe Fungicides Against Phytopathogenic and Mycotoxigenic Fungi Abd El-Ghany T. M. 1, 2, * , Roushdy M. M. 1 , Mohamed A. Al Abboud 2 1 Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, AL-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt 2 Biology Department, Faculty of Science, Jazan University, Jazan, 114, Kingdom Saudi Arabia Abstract The efficiency of different natural plant extracts and of the chemical fungicide Micronite was carried out to determine their effects on the soil fungi particularly phytopathogenic and mycotoxigenic fungi Fusarium oxysporum, Alternaria alternata and Aspergillus flavus. In vitro studies were carried out to test the antifungal activity of 4 plant extracts; performed with either cold distilled water. The results revealed that plants extracts had a strong antifungal activity with significant inhibition on the growth of the all tested fungi. Extracts of Azadirachta indica and Jatropha curcas were the most effective to inhibit the growth of the tested fungi. On the other hand, the chemical fungicide was more efficient than the natural compounds. Different concentrations of plant extract of A. indica and of chemical fungicide were studied on the growth of Aspergillus flavus and Alternaria alternate. Findings from this study confirmed that plant extracts can be used as natural fungicides to control pathogenic fungi, thus reducing the dependence on the synthetic fungicides. Azadirachta indica extract, which was found to be the most efficient extract, might be a promising agent for controlling these fungi. Keywords Fungi, Bioevaluating, Fungicide, Fungi, Mycotoxigenic, Phytopathogenic Received: March 23, 2015 / Accepted: April 4, 2015 / Published online: April 6, 2015 @ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1. Introduction To avoid the hazardous effects of chemicals, natural products of some plants have been used to control plant disease (Rahber-Bhatti, 1986; Bowers and Locke, 2000; Momin et al., 2001). Development of safer anti-fungal agents such as plant extracts to control phytopathogens in agriculture was reported in recent years (Imtiaj et al., 2005; Tumen et al., 2013).The essential oils and their constituents have been found effective as antifungal agent (Daferera et al., 2000; Sridhar et al., 2003). Several reports have been made on the fungicidal properties of neem oil (Kazmi et al., 1995). Locke (1995) reported that in field Alternaria alternata, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium oxysporum has been completely controlled by using 2-10% neem oil. It is observed that mustard seed oil also showed antifungal activity (Dhingra et al., 2004). Houghton et al., (2006) reported antifungal activity of asafoetida against Microsporeum gypseum and Trichophyton interdigitale. Thyagaraia & Hosono (1996) also studied the inhibition effect of asafoetida on Rhizopus sporus, Mucor dimorphosphorous, Penicillium commune and Fusarium solani. Extracts from plants such as garlic (Allium sativum) (Obagwu and Korsten, 2003), Azadirachta indica, Moringa oleifera (Adandonon et al., 2006), Ferula communis and Dittrichia viscose, Juniperus communis (Menghani and Sharma 2012) have been tested on many other soil borne fungi. Alkhail (2005) showed that extracts of Allium sativum, Azadirachta indica and Eugenia caryophyllus presented remarkable biological activity when tested against fungi viz., F. oxysporum, Botrytis cinerea.