Synthesis of benzothiazole-appended bis-triazole-based structural isomers with promising antifungal activity against Rhizoctonia solani .

In order to explore new antifungal agrochemicals, we reported the synthesis of two series 5a-f, 6 and 7a-f, 8 of benzothiazole-appended bis-triazole derivative-based structural isomers using a molecular hybridization approach. The synthesized compounds were tested for fungal growth inhibition against the plant pathogen Rhizoctonia solani . All the synthesized compounds showed excellent antifungal activity in their minimum concentrations (10-0.62 μM). Among all the synthetics, compounds 5b (ED 50 : 2.33 μM), 5f (ED 50 : 0.96 μM), and 7f (ED 50 : 1.48 μM) exerted a superior inhibitory effect in comparison to the commercially available fungicide, hexaconazole (ED 50 : 2.44 μM). The binding interactions of the active compounds 5f, 7f, 6, and 8 within the active site of the sterol 14α-demethylase enzyme were studied with the help of molecular docking studies. The studies revealed that these hybrid pharmacophores could be used as an important intermediate to demonstrate new structural isomer-based fungicides.