STUDIES ON FUNGAL ISOLATES INVOLVED IN BIODETERIORATION OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GENERAL EGYPTIAN BOOK ORGANIZATION (GEBO)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Prof. Plant pathology. dept., Agricultural & Biological dev., NRC., Cairo, Egypt

2 Assistant Team, Microbiological Lab.., GEBO, Cairo., Egypt

3 Assistant Team, Microbiological Lab.., GEBO, Cairo., Egyp

Abstract

Microbiological contamination with fungi and bacteria can pose a significant destroy to old
manuscripts or health hazard to those working in archives or library. Among 520 selected old
documents, 162 manuscripts (31.15%) macroscopically showed fungal growth or damage and
number of 75 documents (14.42%) were positive for presence of fungi but by culture fungal
contamination revealed in 30 manuscripts (5.77%). Also, about 199 representative fungal
isolates developed on PDA medium were isolated from old manuscripts samples. Aspergillus,
Fusarium and Penicillium spp. were the main contaminating mould genera of all tested
manuscripts and account over two third of contaminations. The fungal genera could be
arranged on the basis of their frequent occurrence as follows: Aspergillus (45.57%), Fusarium
(33.1%), Penicillium (8.6%), Alternaria (6.5%), Trichoderma (3.0%), Stymphylium (1.5%) and
Nigrospora (0.5%) of the total fungal count. The obtained data also showed that of the 53
fungal isolates screened for cellulolytic activity on carboxy methyl cellulose (CMC) only
31(58.49% ) had the ability to grow. Moreover, only 8 out off 31fungal isolates had a high
ability to decompose cellulose powder in Czepek's medium. The growth of A. flavus was
completely inhibited (100% inhibition) at rhiozolex concentration of ≤ 200ppm and benlate
concentration of ≤ 400ppm. While, the growth of A. niger was also completely inhibited at
rhizolex concentration of ≤ 400ppm and benlate at≤ 200ppm. The growth of F. oxysporum
was completely inhibited by rhizolex at 1600ppm and benlate at ≤ 100ppm. On the other
hand, fumigation with Para formaldehyde tablet for 9 days completely inhibited A. niger
growth.

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