• RUPA GUHA NANDI
• JYOTI KIRAN BARA
• ANUSREE S NAIR
• ANCHAN YADAV

Parthenium hysterophorus is an alien species commonly known as congress grass or carrot grass belonging to Asteraceae family. This plant species is native to the area surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, Central America, Southern North America, West Indies, and Central South America. In India, this invasive weed has become a big problem. At present congress grass has become world’s most devastating and hazardous weeds. This plant is known for its negative impact on the biodiversity, agriculture, animal and human being. Parthenium plant is known to cause allergic respiratory problems, contact dermatitis, diarrhea, skin allergy, skin rashes excessive water loss, mutagenicity, both in human and livestock. It can be controlled either by using chemical herbicides or weedicides, but their use adversely affects the environment and human health. Hence, alternate eco-friendly and cost-effective methods are required to control the weed. There is an urgent need to isolate and identify the active herbicidal or weedicidal ingredients from plants and fungal metabolites. These chemical constituents may provide the structural lead to prepare natural product based on environment-friendly herbicides to manage and control this harmful weed. In present investigation, significant reduction in growth of Parthenium hysterophorus was found after inoculation with different fungal strains within two months. Alternaria alternate, Aspergillus niger and Puccinia graminis were the fungal strains which showed degradation effect on germination and early seedling growth of Parthenium weed, among these Alternaria alternate showed drastic reduction in the growth. There is need to extract and identify phytotoxins from microorganisms for bioremediation in future.

Allergic, herbicides, metabolites, Parthenium hysterophorus, phytotoxins

"BIODEGRADATION OF PARTHENIUM HYSTEROPHORUS BY PATHOGENIC FUNGAL STRAINS.", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 5, page no.439-445, May-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1905J64.pdf

"BIODEGRADATION OF PARTHENIUM HYSTEROPHORUS BY PATHOGENIC FUNGAL STRAINS.", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 5, page no. pp439-445, May-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1905J64.pdf