natural-products-in-plant-pest-management

Fungal Endophytes 235isolated some bioactive compounds and melanin from endophytic fungi(Suryanarayanan et al., 2004). To date, the overall situation in India has notdrastically improved, as is the case in other countries such as China, Japanand Brazil (Verma et al., 2009). However, several research groups have startedpaying more attention to various aspects of endophytic fungi. No more thana dozen research groups at different places in India are vigorously involvedeither with biodiversity or in natural-product discovery from this untappedand alternative resource. It has become obvious to many workers throughoutthe world that endophytic microbes have enormous potential for solvingmany of humankind’s problems. Thus, with the discovery of new compounds,we can protect our interests in agricultural and medical industriesas well as plant health (Omacini et al., 2001; Gunatilaka, 2006; Gimenez et al.,2007). Currently, some focused research on the different aspects of endophytesis being carried out and valuable results have been published (Shankar et al.,2003; Seena and Sridhar, 2004; Amna et al., 2006; Verma et al., 2006, 2007, 2008,2009; Gond et al., 2007; Tejesvi et al., 2007; Gangadevi and Muthumarry, 2008;Kharwar et al., 2008, 2009).It is important for all involved in this work to realize the importance ofacquiring the necessary permits from governmental, local, and other sourcesto collect and transport plant materials (especially from abroad) from whichendophytes are to be eventually isolated. In addition to this aspect of thework is the added activity of producing the necessary agreements andfinancial-sharing arrangements with indigenous people or governments incase a product does develop an income stream.Another concern is that if endophytic fungi may produce a natural productof host origin, a host plant may also acquire the ability to produce some‘mycotoxins’ or other secondary metabolites of fungal origin. The need fornew and useful compounds to provide assistance and relief in all aspects ofthe human condition is ever growing. Drug resistance in bacteria, the appearanceof new life-threatening viruses, the recurrent problems of diseases inpeople with organ transplants, a variety of severe diseases affecting plantsand the tremendous increase in the incidence of fungal infections in theworld’s population all underscore our inadequacy to cope with these problems.Environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, and spoilage of landand water also add to problems facing us, and each of these in turn can havehealth- and hunger-related consequences.The researchers who are interested in exploiting endophytes should haveaccess to, or have some expertise in, microbial taxonomy and this includesmodern molecular techniques involving sequence analyses of 16S and 18SrDNA. Currently, endophytes are viewed as an outstanding source of bioactivenatural products because there are so many of them occupying literallymillions of unique biological niches (higher plants) growing in so manyunusual environments. Thus, it would appear that a myriad of biotopicalfactors associated with plants can be important in the selection of a plant forstudy. It may be the case that these factors govern which microbes are presentin the plant as well as the biological activity of the products associated withthese organisms.