Evaluation of biocontrol agents for management of wilt disease of tomato incited by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici

Abstract

Fusarium wilt of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L) incited by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici causes heavy yield loss due to the lack of a long term management options for this pathogen. The study was undertaken to assess the efficacy of biocontrol agents Trichoderma harzianum, T. viride and Aspergillus niger against wilt fungus. All biocontrol agents produced significant inhibitory effect on pathogen development. T. viride caused maximum reduction (83.56%) in growth and fresh (332.49 mg) and dry weight (52.19 mg) of the pathogen. In pot trial seed treatment with T. viride caused minimum disease severity (1.2) and maximum significant increase in plant fresh (60.23 g) and dry weight (23.82 g), plant length (63.91 cm) and yield/plant (258.05 g). T. harzianum seed treatment showed highest increase in chlorophyll (3.04 mg/g fresh weight) and lycopene content (75.43 mg/kg fresh weight) whereas T. viride seed treatment showed maximum total phenols (93.58 μg catechol/g fresh weight).

Keywords:

• Biocontrol agent
• disease severity
• chlorophyll
• lycopene
• phenols
• tomato wilt

Acknowledgements

We thank the Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University for providing facilities and University Grants Commission, India, for providing the fellowship to carry out this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).