A total of twenty two rhizospheric fungi were isolated from different rhizosphere soil of healthy crop plants of Mysore, Karnataka, India and tested for their efficacy to solubilize phosphates in PKV medium. Among the isolates, Penicillium sp. RFUOM 14 solubilized phosphates by producing clear halo zone around the colony. Further, Penicillium sp. RFUOM 14 inducers were treated for different crop plants and observed that the treatments enhanced seed germination and seedling vigor. Among the treatments, conidial suspension treated for 6 h showed maximum of 85.75 %, 80 % and 83 % of seed germination and seedling vigor 985.25, 523 and 673.5 in pearl millet, brinjal and tomato, respectively.

Objective: An investigation on Aldose Reductase Enzyme (ALR) inhibitory activity of apigenin (API) isolated from Morus indica L. was evaluated by ex vivo and molecular docking studies. Materials and Methods: The inhibitory efficacy of API from M. indica was evaluated against ALR in lens tissue of mice by ex vivo and their binding mechanism through molecular docking was carried out by AutoDock. Results: The API (10-50 µg mL -1 ) concentration exhibited significant inhibition (p ≤ 0.05) of ALR enzyme in a dose dependent manner with IC 50 value of 39.23 µg mL -1 . The positive control aminoguanidine (AG) at 10 mM inhibited 42.96% of ALR. The molecular docking studies revealed that API showed better binding energy (-9.15 kJ mol -1 ) when compared to AG (-3.78 kJ mol -1 ). Molecular interaction analysis showed that API interrupts the proton donation mechanism which is necessary for the catalytic activity of ALR by forming H-bond with Trp20 (proton donor). Conclusion: The ALR inhibition potential offered by API was further confirmed through molecular docking studies. The present findings support the pharmacological application of API for the treatment of diabetes cataract.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

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