Antifungal activity of some trityl-based synthetic dyes.

The fungicidal activity of 10 trityl dyes and six reference compounds was determined on 36 fungal strains, and the data matrix was evaluated separately by principal component analysis (PCA) and by spectral mapping technique (SPM). The dimensionality of the maps of the principle component loadings and variables and the selectivity maps were reduced to two by varimax rotation and by nonlinear mapping. Calculations proved that both the strength and selectivity of the fungicidal activity of trityl dyes considerably depended on the chemical structure of the dye and on the type of fungi. Both PCA and SPM were suitable for evaluation of the antifungal activity of dyes; however, the strength and selectivity of the fungicidal effect can be separated only by SPM. Due to its advantageous application parameters, use of SPM in future quantitative structure-activity relationship studies is highly recommended.