Abstract
Recently some higher plants and their constituents have proved successful in providing harmless fungicides because of their lesser phytotoxicity, more systemicity and easily biodegradable nature (Fawcett & Spencer 1970; Beye 1978) in contrast to some synthetic fungicides which often impose several bad side-effects. In the present project, the volatile fraction of leaves of Melaleuca leucadendron which has been reported to contain antifungal activity (Chaurasia & Vyas 1977), was evaluated for its activity against Rhizoctonia solani which causes severe damping-off of seedlings of some agricultural crops.
