investigating the antifungal effect of cinnamon extract and curcumin compared to two standard drugs against aspergillus flavus and penicillium citrinum

The development of strategies to control fungal infections may be an effective mean for therapeutic interventions. plant fungicides based on synthetic chemicals cause severe and long-term environmental pollution and are highly and acutely toxic causing cancer in humans and animals (1). in the current study, we aimed to investigate the antifungal effects of two natural substances namely cinnamon and curcumin as fungi statistic and/or fungicide on aspergillus flavus and penicillium citrinum. our results showed that curcumin at 500 μg/ml resulted in minimal inhibition of both tested fungi and consequently at 1 mg/ml was able to act as a fungicide agent. moreover, cinnamon extract resulted in a weaker mic and mfc on tested fungi (mic: 12.5 mg/ml, mfc: 50 mg/ml, a. flavus; mic:12.5 mg/ml, mfc:25 mg/ml, p. citrinum), when compared to currently used chemical agents such as natamycin and amphotericin b. the cinnamon-induced antifungal effect was weaker than the used antifungal agents. our results suggested that screening the antifungal effects of natural substances would be a novel approach in encountering with fungal infections and most likely they could be useful substances for preventing of fungal growth in packaging of food materials.