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Dermatophytes are a group of fungi that commonly cause skin diseases in
animals and humans. Psidium guajava is a fruit tree with high medicinal value
commonly used to cure various skin ailments. Methanol leaf extract of Psidium
guajava was used to screen for the antifungal activity against five species of
dermatophytes; Epidermophyton Jloccosum, Trichophyton rubrum, T.
mentagrophytes, Microsporum gypseum and M. canis. The antifungal activity of
the extract was tested using the agar well diffusion method from which the
methanol crude extract revealed the highest antifungal activity exhibiting 22.5
mm against E. Jloccosum. Preliminary analysis of secondary metabolites was
performed for the methanol crude extract which revealed the presence of many
bio-active compounds including .saponins, steroids and alkaloids. It was then
subjected to fractionation and hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and aqueous
fractions were obtained. Ethyl acetate fraction exhibited the highest antifungal
activity against the test organisms recording 27.13 mm against M. canis. flic
secondary metabolites present in this chosen fraction were separated using thin
layer chromatography (TLC) followed by the detection under UV light (365 nm
and 254 nm). Contact bioautography was performed against the tested
dermatophyte species using the detected spots from UV to determine the growth
inhibitory activities. The secondary metabolites that were separated by TLC were
identified using specific spray reagents which revealed the presence of alkaloids,
steroids and llavonoids. Thus, P. guajava possesses different types ofsecondary
metabolites which are effective antifungal compounds against dermatophytes
