Abstract
There is a growing body of evidence that endophytic fungal metabolites possess important biological activities. Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers., a well-known grass species with potential medicinal properties, is under-explored for the diversity of endophytic fungal species and their metabolites. We report here the diversity of endophytic fungi in the culm, leaf and inflorescence of Cynodon dactylon when cultured on moist blotter (MB), potato dextrose agar (PDA) and malt extract agar (MEA). Species richness, Shannon and Simpson diversity and evenness indices showed that PDA followed by MEA supported the growth of the largest number of fungal species. Amongst four fungal species tested, Curvularia tsudae was selected for further studies on antimicrobial and antioxidant activities. The mycelial mat (MM) and culture filtrate (CF) of PD broth grown Curvularia tsudae extracted with ethyl acetate and methanol, respectively, were subjected to antimicrobial assay against five bacterial and four fungal test isolates. Results indicated that the ethyl acetate extract of CF had moderate activity against Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas fluorescence and Staphylococcus aureus whereas the methanolic MM extract showed high to moderate activity to Aspergillus flavus, A. niger and Fusarium oxysporum. Cyclic voltammetric analysis of ethyl acetate extract showed very good antioxidant activity and the extract contained coumarins when determined by HPLC. High-resolution orbitrap LC-MS of ethyl acetate extract revealed the presence of metabolites with antimicrobial and antioxidant and other biological activities. Finding of the present study suggested that Curvularia tsudae could be exploited for pharmaceutical applications.