garlic as fungicide

d_dakay · Post by **d_dakay** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:51 pm

hello sciencebuddies!
i want to ask about my sciencefair project about garlic (Alluim cepa) extracts as fungicide to Botrytis squamosa and Botrytis cineria. i want to ask how to perform the experiment. I want it as soon as possible.
thank you!

hiramuzammal · Post by **hiramuzammal** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 9:27 am

Try a google scholar search:
I searched "garlic extracts as a fungicide" and I got a lot of results.
The methods section of the scientific papers will help you to learn how to perform the experiment.

This paper might help:
http://apsnet.org/pd/PDFS/1997/0106-05R.PDF

carolinethorn · Post by **carolinethorn** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 10:58 am

Hi d

Lets think about some of the important aspects of your experiment -

Fungicide means kills fungi, so you need to have some kind of way to measure if you fungi are being killed.

But before you can kill the fungi you need to have some way of keeping them alive so that you can tell the difference between when you add the fungicide (the test) and when you don't (the control)

One of the ways people grow microorganisms are on plates of medium. The microorganisms are "streaked" onto the plate, basically by wiping a toothpick across them. Then the plates are put at a temperature that the microorganisms will grow at over night. In the morning you should be able to see colonies - little bumps where the microorganisms are growing.
You can put your test chemical into the medium when you pour the plate (you could do some plates with a lot of garlic extract and some with smaller amounts) . Then you can count the number of colonies on the plate to measure if the garlic is killing the fungi.

You can also grow some microorganisms in liquid culture. I don't know if that is true for Botrytis. With liquid culture you can use a machine (either a turbidometer or a spectrometer) to measure how cloudy the liquid is as a way to tell how many microorganisms are in it.

So, some of the things you need to find out are

1. What kind of medium will Botrytis grow in ?

2. Is it a liquid medium or will it grow on a plate or petri dish?

3. What temperature does it grow at?

Perhaps the lab you are doing the experiments in know the answer to these questions or has a text book with it in. Or maybe you can find out by google searching.
Why don't you do some searching on those aspects and then repost what you find and we can help you some more.

Good luck,
Caroline