Global Advanced Research Journal of Agricultural Science (ISSN: 2315-5094) Vol. 7(6) pp. 176-182, June, 2018 Issue.
Available online http://garj.org/garjas/home
Copyright © 2018 Global Advanced Research Journals
Full Length Research Paper
Nanoparticles and antifungal activity of iron sulfide
synthesized by green route using Uncaria tomentosa
leaves extract
Nidá M. Salem
1
, Fatin M. Abedalaziz
2
and Akl M. Awwad
1,2*
1
Department of Plant Protection, School of Agriculture, the University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
2
Department of Materials Science, Royal Scientific Society, Amman, Jordan
Accepted 18 January, 2018
This research paper described the synthesis of iron sulfide nanoparticles from iron nitrate and sodium
sulfide in the presence of Uncaria tomentosa leaves aqueous extract at ambient temperature. The iron
sulfide nanoparticles (FeSNPs) were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron
microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) and
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. The synthesized FeSNPs were found to be
spherical in shape with average size diameter 40nm. Iron sulfide nanoparticles exhibited strong
antifungal activity towards plant pathogenic fungus, Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici. These
results led us to extend our research to study the effect of FeSNPs on the control of Fusarium wilt in
tomato crops as fungicide and plant growth.
Keywords: iron sulfide nanoparticles • Uncaria tomentosa leaves extract• Antifungal activity • Fusarium
oxysporum
INTRODUCTION
The present study was designed to synthesize iron sulfide
nanoparticles (FeSNPs) by facile green method from
sodium sulfide nonahydrate (Na
2
S.9H
2
O) and iron nitrate
nonahydrate [Fe(NO
3
)
3
.9H
2
O]in the presence of U.
tomentosa leaves aqueous extract at ambient temperature.
Different routes and methods have been developed to
synthesize iron sulfides nanoparticles, such as
solvothermal process (Kar and Chaudhuri 2005; Zhao et
al., 2009). polyol mediated process (Ivantsov et al., 2017),
microbial synthesis (Kim et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2017),
hydrothermal synthesis (Pua et al., 2010; Akhoondi et al.,
*Corresponding Author’s Email: akl.awwad@yahoo.com
2013), sulfurization of hematite nanowires (Cummins et al.,
2013), chemical precipitation method (Kim et al., 2011; Liu
et al., 2017), a single source precursor approach (Zhang et
al., 2010), chemical bath deposition (Akhtar et al., 2015),
high-energy mechanical milling and mechanochemical
processing (Chin et al., 2005), microwave synthesis (Xiao
et al, 2016), from dithiocarboxylate precursor complex
decomposition (Maji et al., 2012), from natural pyrite (Ding
et al., 2013).
In this study, we report for the first time a novel, rapid, cost-
effective and environmentally biosynthesis of iron sulfide
nanoparticles using U. tomentosa leaves extract at ambient
temperature. This biosynthetic green route for iron sulfide
nanoparticles was found to be extremely effective against