Evaluation of artificial inoculation methods to determine resistance reaction to dry root rot and black root rot disease in mulberry (Morus spp.)

Abstract

Root rot disease of mulberry is a widespread soil-borne disease, which can cause serious damage and huge economic loss to mulberry production in India. Efficient and reliable screening methods are prerequisites to evaluate the disease-resistant germplasm accessions for developing a cultivar’s resistance to root rot. A multifactor experiment with four replications was established to evaluate four different inoculation techniques namely, colonized sorghum grains (CSG), colonized toothpick, root dip (RD), and syringe inoculation using pathogenic isolates of three fungal pathogens; Fusarium solani, F. oxysporum (dry root rot) and Lasiodiplodia theobromae (black root rot) against known resistant and susceptible mulberry germplasm accessions under glasshouse conditions. In addition, all the methods of evaluating resistance were compared and the results indicated that CSG and RD methods of inoculation for dry and black root rot were stable in their pathogenic effect. Also, these two methods were easy to screen and more convenient than other methods.

Keywords:

• Mulberry
• root rot
• root dip
• colonized sorghum grain
• inoculation methods

Acknowledgment

Dr. Belaghihalli N. Gnanesh would like to thank the Department of Science and Technology, Science and Engineering Research Board, New Delhi for providing the Ramanujan Fellowship.

Authors’ contributions

Both authors contributed equally to the study and approved the final manuscript.

Ethics declarations

Not applicable, no humans or animals were used in this research.

Conflicts of interest/competing interests

The authors declare that this article has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. There were no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from the funding agencies.