Isolation of actinomycetes from leaf litters and its antifungal properties

Leaf litter is an important source of energy and carbon in many streams. Fungi and bacteria which play their roles in leaf litter decomposition process are microorganisms that secrete enzymes that can break down large molecules into smaller compounds. Actinomycetes are gram-positive bacteria that perform a wide array of important function in various habitats and also in organic matter processing. A wide taxonomic range of actinomycetes have the ability to produce secondary metabolites with biological activities such as antibiotic, antifungal, antiviral, anticancer, enzyme and other industrially useful compounds. Two isolation methods; rehydration-centrifugation (RC) and dry heat (DH) were used in order to isolate different type of actinomycetes. The actinomycetes were selected based on their morphological characteristic. The colony was then made into lawn for screening of antifungal properties against Aspergillus niger, Rhizopus stolonifer, and Fusarium solani. A total of 65 colony have been isolate from 31 leaf litter samples collected from the area of campus Jeli, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan. Only 10 of them survived from contamination of other bacteria and fungi and have different morphological characteristic. Among 10 isolates tested for screening of antifungal properties, only 1 isolate was found to have maximum activity against A. niger and R. stolonifer. Particularly, the colony strains such as colony 21, 18, 5 and 7 significantly inhibited the growth of some of the fungal pathogen. The findings from this study could contribute to increase scope of finding important antifungal properties from actinomycetes.