Abstract

• Six medicinal plants were collected from Pathein University Campus. Ten endophytic fungi were isolated from these plants by surface sterilization method. The isolated fungal strains were given temporary names as TMO-1 to TMO-10. Antimicrobial activity of the isolated fungal strains was evaluated by the agar well diffusion assay with ten test organisms. Nearly all strains showed the antimicrobial activity. Among them, fungus TMO-4 from Bauhinia variegata L. (Swe-daw-ni) was screened for further investigations based on the results of antifungal activity especially against Candida albicans. In the fermentation conditions of this selected fungus, various carbon and nitrogen sources were utilized for the growth phase and maximum antifungal activity. These strains showed the moderate growth on glucose, glycerol and fructose. In the nitrogen source, TMO-4 exhibited the excellent growth on yeast extract (36.09 mm). The fermentation medium-1 gives the highest antifungal activity (29.45 mm) consisted of glucose and yeast extract for carbon and nitrogen source, 4 days age of culture (28.11 mm), 10 % inoculum size (30.03 mm), shaking culture (30.86 mm), temperature 25 ◦C (30.00 mm) and pH 5 (29.93 mm). In the extraction of antifungal metabolites, fermented broth of TMO-4 was extracted by using four solvent systems. The ethyl acetate extract was the most suitable solvent system with Rf value of 0.80. Three isolated compounds A, B and C were identified by using modern spectroscopic methods such as UV, FT IR and GC-MS and found to be coumarin derivative, dibutyl phthalate and steroid derivative respectively.