Antimicrobial activity of Zingiber officinale Rhizospheric Soil Actinomycetes against selected pathogenic microorganisms / Amer Shahjehan Hassan

Actinomycetes are well known bacteria as rich reservoirs of medicinal antibiotics and extremely significant to pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. Actinomycetes primarily are soil inhabitants and have the ability to produced many kinds of bioactive compounds. The isolation of actinomycetes was done from the rhizospheric soil samples at Kg. Tikolod, Tambunan Sabah where ginger, Zingiber officinale is highly cultivated as medicinal plants. A total of 23 isolates of actinomycetes strains isolated using the actinomycetes isolation agar media (AIA). The 23 actinomycetes isolates were characterized by cultural characterization and microscopic examination that showed pigment producing properties and rod shaped filamentous appearance under the microscope. Out of the 23 actinomycetes isolates, eight isolates showed inhibitory activity against the selected test organisms consist of three gram-negative bacteria, two gram-positive bacteria and one fungi. The inhibitory activity tested using disc diffusion technique showed that five isolates have promising antagonistic activity against the tested organisms. The isolate RS-42 showed high inhibitory activity against Candida albicans with 15 mm inhibition have great potential to be used as antifungal agents. Further assay of identification with application of high specificity method such as molecular technique can be executed in order to discover more potential actinomycetes to be used as antimicrobial agents.