Natural Antifungal Agents Isolated from Argentine Plants: A Summary of Studies Developed in the Period 2000–2020

Abstract

Fungal species are able to carry out beneficial actions on industrial processes that directly affect human being wellness. They can also be the cause of severe pathologies both in humans or food products. Fungicidal agents currently used to treat human or plant pathogens have many drawbacks after prolonged or inappropriate use, proving to be inefficient in a short term. Therefore, academics and the pharmaceutical or agrochemical industries are constantly encouraged to search for new chemical entities with antifungal action. In this sense, taking advantage of secondary plant metabolites to find out antifungal molecules could be of high interest. During the last 20 years, we have constituted a group of scientists that broach the subject related to antifungal products obtained from vegetable sources, and we have assayed hundreds of plant species and a considerable number of natural metabolites isolated from them, against the main fungal pathogens that affect humans and crops. The aim of this chapter is to update the plants that have demonstrated the best antifungal action during this period of time and the natural compounds responsible for this. In addition, new strategies like the evaluation of photoactive species and synergism, as well as comparisons with results obtained by other authors reported in the literature, will be discussed.