Mycoflora of Herbal Drug Plants from Bahrain

Abstract

Mycoflora profile were evaluated in crude unstored samples of twenty herbal drug plants, in which half were collected from cultivated habitats and the rest from desert locations. Micro/1mgal colonies were singled out from a total of 130 samples using standard dilution plate method on several media. The highest fungal spectra and diversity was encountered in materials of cultivated habitats with a total of 2707 isolates, representing 39 species compared to only 965 isolates and 25 species .from desert locations. The most heavily contaminated herbal drug samples examined .from cultivated and desert habitats were observed in parts of Atriplex leucoclada and Erodium laciniatum var pulverulentum, with an average of 636 and 259 cfitIg„ respectively. The maximum relative contamination frequency from five random samples infected with > 5 fungi was also found associated with A. leucoclada (93.2%) followed by Trigonella anguina (86.7%) in cultivated and desert habitats, correspondingly. Moreover, among both habitats, the medicinal herb A. leucoclada from the cultivated habitat exhibited the highest species diversity based on the SIMPSON (0.930) and SHANNON-WIENER (2.856) indices. The most predominant mould genera detected from both habitats, based on relative density values (> 5%), were Chaetomium, Aspergillus, Rhizopus and Cladosporium. Moreover, these taxa revealed an overall frequency of occurrence rates > 70% and hence contributed substantially to the total population density load of the recovered fungi in this study. The incidence of toxigenic moulds represented mainly by A. flavus in ? 5 random samples fluctuated between 31.3 —1.9`% in cultivated habitat plants and 11.7 — 3.2% in desert habitat plants. Similarly, data are consistent with previously reported .findings that mould spoilage incidence of herbal drug plants investigated in this study constitute a health hazard, especially if destined for human consumption. Thus, there is an urgent need for quality control and hygienic measures before the, finished products are channeled to consumers or end up in drug preparations.