Antifungal Potential of Phytochemicals against , the Plant Pathogen Causing Inflorescence Rot of Date Palm.

Date palm ( L.) inflorescence rot caused by poses a serious threat to date palm in Morocco. The present study aims to determine the antifungal activity of five plant extracts against , including , , , , and and link this effect to their content in phenolics and flavonoids, as well as their antioxidant properties. Plant extracts exhibited significant discrepancies regarding their antifungal activity ( < 0.05). The extracts of and had the strongest and dose-dependent manner inhibitory effect against mycelial growth and spore germination. and caused the greatest sporulation reductions of about 88.05% and 36.11%, respectively. In addition, there were significant differences among the examined plant extracts with respect to their total polyphenols (14.52-76.68 mg GAE/g DW), flavonoids (8.75-57.78 g RE/100 g DW), and antioxidant properties as measured by TEAC (74.77-391.23 mmol TE/g DW) and FRAP assays (87.18-474.04 mmol TE/g DW). Strong correlations were found between phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity suggesting that polyphenols play a key role in the observed antioxidant and antifungal activities.