Isolation of Dye from Sporophore of Xylaria polymorpha for Textile Dyeing and Spectrophotometric Characterization of Dyed Fabrics

Abstract

The present study was aimed at isolating natural dye from Xylaria polymorpha, a wood rot fungus with club shaped fruiting body by standardizing the extraction protocol. Different fabrics viz. silk, wool and cotton were dyed using the extracted dye employing different common mordants of metallic salts and few natural mordants and the resultant shades, fastness properties and colour coordinates were compared on the test fabrics. The dye produced different shades of blackish brown on the dyed fabrics. Based on the highest absorbance, best performance of the dye was recorded with wool followed by silk whereas least absorbance was observed with cotton. The dye showed high affinity with wool and silk fabrics but relatively low affinity with cotton. It is found to hold very good to excellent colourfastness (rating 4-5) on wool and silk fabrics but good to very good (rating 3-4) on cotton against various colour retarding factors. The study evidently indicated that X. polymorpha dye is suitable for dyeing wool, silk and cotton thus establishing the fungus as a potential source of textile dye of biological origin. This is the first report on X. polymorpha as a viable source of textile dye of biological origin.