Polyamines and cyclolinopeptides possess limited antifungal activities against three flax pathogens in vitro

Flax seed (also called linseed) is one of the richest sources of a group of chemicals called orbitides, but it is unclear why flax makes these orbitides.

One possibility is that orbitides protect the plant against fungal diseases.

Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.

We tested whether orbitides could inhibit the growth of three common fungal pathogens of flax.

For comparison, at the same time we also tested spermidine, spermine, and cardendazim, which are already known to have some antifungal activities.

We found that for most pathogens, the orbitides, spermidine and spermine all had moderate antifungal activity, but this was much lower that the antifungal activity of carbendazim (a commercial antifungal product).

Read the paper — Orbitides and free polyamines have similarly limited fungicidal activity against three common pathogens of flax in vitro by Isadora Louise Alves da Costa Ribeiro Quintans, Juliana Alves da Costa Ribeiro Souza, and Michael K Deyholos