Antifungal Effect of Aqueous and Ethanolic Extract of Pinecone (Pinuselderica) of Tehranon on Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans

In recent decades, infections of fungi caused significant increase in the rate of disease creation. Also, there are some limitations in the treatment of fungal diseases such asshortages and high price antifungal drugs, lateral complications and drug resistance caused Attention of researchers to new antifungal drugs, especially herbal medicines. The purpose of this study is studying on antifungal effect of aqueous and ethanolic extract of pinecone (Pinuselderica) of Tehran on Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans. Then, the minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration was determined. In this study, antifungal activity of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of pine tree of Tehran was investigated by two agar disk diffusion methods at 4 levels (5, 30, 55 and 80 mg/ml) and pure plate method. Data were analyzed by SPSS 16software and the means were compared using by analysis of variance (ANOVA) at a significant level of P<0.05. MIC and MFC of ethanolic extract for Aspergillus niger was 32mg/ml and 128mg/ml, respectively. On the other hand, MIC of ethanolic and aqueous extracts of C. albicanswasrespectively32and8 mg/ml and MFC for thismold was 128and64mg/ml, respectively. In the agar diffusion method, all concentrations of methanol extract have inhibited effect on mentioned microorganismes.Aspergillus niger in mixed cultures showed dgreatest resistance when used to aqueous and ethanolic extract of pine cone of Tehran.The results show that aqueous and especially ethanolic extracts of pinecone of Tehran have ananti fungal effects especially on candida. So there is hope that in the future by replacing this extraction stead of chemical anti fungal drugs that have many lateral complications. Therefore, these method beableto controlfungal infections.