Antifungal assays The antifungal activity of the volatile oil were undertaken using inverted petriplate method (Singh et al., 2006). PDA plates were prepared using 8.2 cm plastic petri dishes containing 20 ml of PDA. A 5 mm dia. disc of the test species was cut from the periphery of the active growth culture of PDA plates (5-7 days old) and the mycelial surface was placed down on the centre of the dish. The 20 ul of undiluted clove oil and cinnamon oil were pipetted on a small piece (dia. 12 mm) of Whatmann No.1 filter paper and it was kept on the lid of petri dish which was in inverted position. The test plates were incubated at room temperature for 7 days, when the mycelium of fungi reached the edges of the control dish, (without essential oils). The antifungal index was calculated as follows : Antifungal index (AI,%) = (1-Da/Db)x100 where Da is the diameter of growth zone in the experimental dish (cm) and Db is the diameter of growth zone in the control dish (cm) (Hsu et al., 2007). Each experiment was performed three times and the data were average.