Development of Fungistatic Plant Extracts From Food Waste And Oil Based Products To Control Turf-Grass Disease

Synthetic pesticide use has many established detriments such as direct negative effects on soils, plants, insects, small animals (and the entire ecosystem, potentially), the environment and even human health. Furthermore, there are more abstract concerns linked to pesticide use, such as encouraging the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. There is a global need to reduce synthetic pesticide use, while encourage the adoption of alternative methods for pest control such as biological products and integrated pest management strategies. There is a great deal of evidence for the potential utility of essential oils and other natural extracts as antimicrobial agents, especially potent as a counter to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, but in practice heavy utilisation of natural products is relatively scarce, primarily due to a lack of confidence in their performance and relatively high cost of production and therefore purchase. Using very green techniques (steam distillation and crude aqueous ‘solvent’ powdered plant material extraction), a number of natural extracts were obtained and formulated such as spent hops oil and a macerated onion aqueous extract. These extracts were then tested in bioassays against some common fungal pathogens (M. nivale, L. fuciformis and C. cereale) which cause diseases in turf grasses, using simple potato dextrose agar well diffusion, in order to determine the antifungal capability of extracts. Ultimately, several essential oilbased, waste derived fungicides, such as the emulsified spent hops essential oil and an aqueous plum extract, were produced and provided disease control of three pathogenic fungal species in laboratory conditions. Additionally, some aqueous extracts provided comparable and even enhanced antifungal capacity when compared to some oils. This provides a foundation for field testing to determine the ability of these natural, waste-based, extracts to control disease in commercial conditions. The potential benefits of uptake of any such extracts are prolific, including improvement in soil health, countering the emergence of antimicrobial resistance, reduced atmospheric CO2 as a result of synthetic chemical replacement with food waste utilisation)