PJB-2017-145
PREVALENCE OF POSTHARVEST ROTS OF MANGO IN DIFFERENT FARMS OF SINDH, PAKISTAN
REHANA NAZ SYED, ABDUL MUBEEN LODHI, NASIR AHMED RAJPUT, MUHAMMAD ISMAIL KUMBHAR AND MUHAMMAD ALI KHANZADA
Abstract
A serious threat to the mango industry is postharvest decay. Postharvest losses of fresh mango fruits are reported to be more than half of its production in some of the developing countries. Pakistan is one of the main mango growing countries of the world. Highly perishable nature and its susceptibility to post harvest diseases, is the major hindrance in exporting to distant foreign markets. Latent infections by plant pathogenic fungi in the field are the main reason of postharvest disease development during transit and storage. A study was carried out for three consecutive years (2013-2015) to provide an overview of postharvest diseases and pathogens in different orchards of the Sindh. In isolation from the twigs collected from trees Lasiodiplodia theobromae was the most predominant fungus with significant highest frequency of 30.77, 25.00 and 7.5%, followed by Alternaria alternata with the frequency of 20.00, 9.1 and 14.5% while, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides frequencies were 4.82, 6.2 and 3.9% during 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. Incidences and severity of the diseases greatly varied from farm to farm. No significant difference were observed between the incidence of postharvest rots and fruits collected from either side of the trees. Irrespective of fruits position on the tree, stem end rot (SER) remains the predominant postharvest rots on the mangoes of selected orchards. The overall incidences of SER were 10.83, 14.64 and 3.21% in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. The incidences of anthracnose and Alternaria rot were very low. It’s evident from the data that with the passage of time a considerable reduction was occurred in the development of postharvest rots on the mangoes of selected orchards due to the adoption of good farm management practices. L. theobromae was predominantly isolated from the mango fruits having typical symptoms of the stem end rot disease. It is concluded that attention should be given to develop effective strategy to control mango postharvest diseases and more focus should be given to stem end rot. Moreover, it also appears that pre-harvest practices including farm sanitation plays a vital role in keeping the development of postharvest diseases at low level.
To Cite this article:
Download
