PJB-2024-277
MANAGEMENT OF FUSARIUM WILT OF TOMATO THROUGH POWDER PREPARATION OF LEAVES AND FLOWERS OF BUNGLE WEED (AJUGA BRACTEOSA)
ZAKIR ULLAH
Abstract
Different doses of leaf powder (LP) or flower powder (FP) of Bungle weed (Ajuga bracteosa) were evaluated under in vitro and screen house conditions to determine their efficacy in controlling the destructive tomato wilt disease caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici. In the in vitro experiment, colony growth of the pathogen on potato dextrose agar medium amended with different doses of Bungle weed showed that LP or FP significantly reduced the growth even at the lowest concentration of 2g/L. Moreover, an increase in the dose resulted in a significantly more reduction in the colony diameter and the highest dose of 32g/L allowed only 1.30cm and 2.23cm colony diameter with LP and FP application respectively, after two weeks of incubation at 25°C compared with 8.20cm colony diameter in the unamended control showing 84.15% and 72.81% reduction. The data also demonstrated that for each dose of Bungle weed. In the screen house study, resulted in significant reduction in percent disease severity even at the lowest dose of 5g/kg soil. The reduction was found to be dose-dependent and the greatest reduction was observed with the application of the highest dose (25g/kg soil) which allowed only 42.3% disease severity in case of LP application and 47.2% disease severity in case of FP compared with 83.00% disease severity in the inoculated control 45 days after inoculation with the pathogen. The data also demonstrated superiority of LP application to FP application in reducing the disease severity. Likewise, the disease progression curves showed effectiveness of Bungle weed application in slowing down the progress of the disease. Compared with the AUDPC value of 672.70 for the inoculated control, the AUDPC values were 463.33 and 471.35 in case of 5g/kg soil dose of LP and FP, respectively. In case of application of the highest dose (25g/kg soil) the AUDPC values were 361.40 and 387.22 for LP and FP, respectively, showing that the efficacy was dose-dependent and LP was superior to FP in slowing down the progress of the disease. Similarly, the treatment of tomato plants with LP or FP preparations of Bungle weed resulted in promoting the growth parameters of these plants. Plant height, fresh biomass and root length were enhanced significantly as compared with the inoculated control. However, the efficacy of Bungle weed was observed to be co-related with the dose of the LP or FP preparation and for each dose, LP was found to be significantly more effective than the corresponding FP. It is concluded that Bungle weed can be used as an important component in the integrated disease management strategy for Fusarium wilt disease of tomato. However, the maximum non-phytotoxic dose should be worked out and the effect of Bungle weed application on the resident antagonistic micro flora should be investigated.
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