Antimicrobial Activities of Azolla pinnata Harvested from the North-West of Algeria

Azolla is a free floating freshwater fern belonging to the family Azollaceae and order Pteridophyta. It grows naturally in stagnant water of drains, canals, ponds, rivers, haors-baors and marshy lands. Azolla represents an important source of valuable bio products, such as food, nutraceuticals, antioxidants and pigments. There is therefore, an urgent need to develop an appropriate separation and purification technologies. In this work, Azolla pinnata harvested in the north-west of Algeria was used as a source to recover and fractionate bio-derived molecules using ethanol. After analyzing its chemical composition, the ethanolic extracts of these plants were screened for their microbiological activities against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Fusarium oxysporum. The results have shown that the composition of Azolla contained 31.18% crude protein, 12.41% crude fiber, 2.57% ethanolic extract, 13.76% ash and 31.06% nitrogen free extract based on dry weight. In addition, the mean inhibition zones suggest potential antibacterial and antifungal properties of the ethanolic extracts of Azolla. The determination of the bioactive compounds present in the ethanolic extracts responsible in inducing such effect is necessary to know if the effects were due to a single compound or the interaction of several.