Dedicated

TO
“MY BELOVED PARENTS, BROTHERS
AND SISTERS”
Whose encouragement, spiritual inspiration, well wishes, sincere
prayers and precious suggestions helped me to achieve high
academic goals
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All approbations and admirations are for “ALMIGHTY ALLAH”, the creator of
heavens and earth who blessed with His mercy. According to my faith, if oceans turn into ink
and all of the woods become pens, even then, the praises of Allah Almighty cannot be expressed.
Nothing can happen without Allah’s permission. He bestowed the mankind with knowledge and
wisdom to search for the secrets of things so to recognize the authority of Allah.

Numerous blessings for my ideal and the most beloved Holy Prophet MUHAMMAD
(Peace Be Upon Him), who is forever a torch of guidance for humanity as a whole and the only
personality in this universe having the peak humanity greatest and real well of all human beings.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my precious father Allah Ditta Aasi and
mother Bashira, who bestowed on me more than what I can never repay. My brothers, sisters,
nephews, niece, brother-in-law and other family members deserves my sincerest appreciation to
be a back bone and prayed for my success throughout my academic journey.

I feel greatest pleasure and honor to express my gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Nidaa
Harun, Assistant Professor, Department of Botany, University of Okara, Renala Khurd for her
enlightened guidance, affectionate help, constructive criticism, personal interest and analytical
supervision in planning and execution of research and final presentation of this manuscript. I
always found her door open to every critical situation and her keen interest in my research work.

It's my privilege to express my heart full appreciation and sincerest gratitude to Dr.
Waqar Alam, Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Okara, Renala
Khurd for providing me an opportunity to work in his co-supervision and inspiring guidance.

I owe a deep sense of gratitude to my elder brother Shamshad Ali Khan for his keen
interest on me at every phase of my research. His timely suggestion, prompt inspiration,
dynamism and enthusiasm have enabled me to complete my research.

I would like to pay special appreciation and gratitude to my respectable senior Miss
Kaneez Fatima (Ph.D. Scholar) who supported and encouraged me during the whole research
duration and thesis submission. Her timely guidelines and good constructive feedback helped me
in every step throughout the process. I would like to pay my humblest gratitude to the lab
coordinator Mr. Amir who is very nice as a person and whose consistent efforts helped me
throughout the period.

Finally, I would also like to pay earnest appreciation to my research friends; Minahil,
Kashif Bashir and all my class fellows for their helping behavior and consistent encouragement
throughout the research period.

Mahtab

ABSTRACT

Papaya fruit is of great importance and highly demanded with increasing

population. But, the changing environment and resistant pathogenic and fungal variants,
the papaya is getting damaged and both its quality and quantity are decreasing due to
pathogenic infections. Several synthetic fungicides are used to control papaya disease but
these fungicides are not human health and eco-friendly. Synthetic fungicides can also alter
the fruit physical properties and many pathogens can generate resistance to these
fungicides. Plant leaf extracts has great potential to control the infection of fungal
pathogens of papaya fruit. Papaya fruit is used for medicinal purpose against various
human diseases. The aim of this study is to identify the phytochemical components that
shows antifungal activity on papaya fruit by conventional methods. This work will provide
a detailed study on impact of aqueous, methanolic and n-Hexane extracts of Solanum
erianthum D. Don, Solanum viarum Dunal and Salvadora oleoides Decne. on different
fungal cultures. Plant extracts will be prepared by maceration method with modified form.
The cultures will be extracted from diseased fruits and grown in PDA (potato dextrose
agar) media. Papaya fungal pathogens will be identified using molecular (ITS region) and
morpho-anatomical characters. It is expected that Solanum erianthum, Solanum viarum and
Salvadora oleoides might show antifungal activities against papaya fungal pathogens.