Water soluble Chitosan extraction from mycelium of Alternaria solani and its field evaluation on Tomato plants

Growing consumer awareness towards the use of chemical fertilizers, researchers investigate on alternative ecofriendly fertilizer to increase the yield potential of crop plants. Chitosan has been used as a potential alternate to chemical fertilizer. However, the insolubility of commercial chitosan in aqueous media restricts its wide application in agriculture. Therefore, this study aims to isolate a water soluble chitosan from Alternaria solani. A water soluble polysaccharide has been extracted from the mycelium of A. solani. TLC, IR and NMR spectral analyses indicated that the isolated polysaccharide as chitosan (AsCn). Foliar application of water soluble chitosan to tomato plants significantly enhanced the vegetative growth and yield when compared to commercial chitosan and untreated control. Our results demonstrated that AsCn is an effective natural fertilizer to enhance the yield of tomato.