International Journal of Agriculture Sciences ISSN: 0975-3710 & E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 10, Issue 10, 2018, pp.-6109-6110. Available online at https://www.bioinfopublication.org/jouarchive.php?opt=&jouid=BPJ0000217

Research Article EFFICACY OF BIOCONTROL AGENTS AGAINST var. parasitica, THE CAUSAL ORGANISM OF BUCKEYE ROT OF

MONICA SHARMA1*, SHRIDHAR B.P.1 AND SHARMA AMIT2 1Department of Plant Pathology, College of Horticulture and Forestry, Neri, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, 173230, Himachal Pradesh, India 2Department of Basic Science, College of Horticulture and Forestry, Neri, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, 173230, Himachal Pradesh, India *Corresponding Author: Email - [email protected]

Received: May 15, 2018; Revised: May 26, 2018; Accepted: May 27, 2018; Published: May 30, 2018

Abstract: To replace hazardous agrochemicals, biological solution is provided by nature in the form of microorganisms having capacity to suppress the growth of plant pathogens and to promote the plant growth. Buckeye rot of tomato caused by Phytophthora nicotianae var. parasitica is a serious threat to the crop production and has taken a heavy toll of the crop in India which affects mostly the fruits during both spring and winter season crops. In the present investigation, six biological control agents were screened for the efficacy against mycelial growth of P. nicotianae var. parasitica. Out of the six fungal and bacterial biocontrol agents tested, Trichoderma virens resulted in maximum mycelial growth inhibition (77.67%) of the test pathogen followed by T. hamatum (69.40 %), T. harzianum (68.52 %) and T. viride (67.43 %). Pseudomonas fluorescens was least effective with 53.67 percent mycelial growth inhibition. Keywords: Antagonists, eco-friendly, disease management, buckeye rot, biological control agents Citation: Monica Sharma, et al., (2018) Efficacy of Biocontrol Agents Against Phytophthora nicotianae var. parasitica, the Causal Organism of Buckeye Rot of Tomato. International Journal of Agriculture Sciences, ISSN: 0975-3710 & E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 10, Issue 10, pp.- 6109-6110. Copyright: Monica Sharma, et al., This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Introduction Culture discs (5mm), each of the fungal antagonist and the pathogen were taken Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), a member of family Solanaceae, is one of the from the margin of the actively growing cultures and transferred to carrot-juice most important nutritious vegetable both because of its special nutritive value and agar medium contained in Petri plates (90 mm) on opposite sides approximately at its widespread production. It is the world’s largest grown vegetable crop after 1 cm from the wall of the plate. Similarly, bacteria were streaked on the opposite and sweet potato and it tops the list of canned vegetables. The crop is sides of the pathogen. A check having the test pathogen only was also kept for generally grown during winter months (October-April) in plains and during summer comparison. The Petri plates were subsequently incubated at 25±10 C till the (April-October) in hilly regions of the country. In Himachal Pradesh, cultivation of check plate was completely covered by P. nicotianae var. parasitica colony. Each tomato as an off-season crop has gained popularity, being most remunerative treatment was replicated thrice in completely randomized design (CRD). Colony cash crop. The crop is infected by a number of diseases among which buckeye rot diameter of the test pathogen was recorded and the per cent growth inhibition of caused by Phytophthora nicotianae var. parasitica has assumed alarming threat to test pathogen was calculated according to formula Vincent [2]: the crop production and has taken a heavy toll of the crop in India which affects I =C-T/C×100 mostly the fruits during both spring and winter season crops. Prevalence of warm Where, I = Per cent inhibition, C = Growth of test pathogen in absence of biogent and humid weather during growing season of the crop favours the development of (cm), T = Growth of test pathogen in presence of bioagent (cm) the disease. Buckeye rot disease is of serious concern to small and marginal hill farmers as it sometimes results in complete failure when fruiting coincides with the Results and Discussion onset of rainy season [1]. Keeping in view the importance of the disease and All the antagonists inhibited the mycelial growth of the test pathogen, however, the environmental concerns regarding fungicide-application, the present study was percentage of inhibition varied with the antagonists. All Trichoderma spp. showed conducted to evaluate the different biological control agents against P. nicotianae higher efficacy than the bacterial antagonist [Fig-1]. Trichoderma virens (77.67 %) var. parasitica. caused significantly maximum mycelial growth inhibition followed by T. hamatum (69.40 %), T. harzianum (68.52 %) and T. viride (67.43 %) [Table-1]. Materials and Methods Pseudomonas fluorescens was least effective with 53.67 percent mycelia growth The pathogen was isolated from the infected fruits of tomato showing the typical inhibition. The efficacy of different species of Trichoderma against various species symptoms of buckeye rot disease following the standard isolation methods on of Phytophthora was reported in literature. Use of biocontrol agents like T. carrot-juice agar medium. Fungal bio-control agents viz., Trichoderma harzianum, hamatum and T. virens were found effective against Phytophthora foot rot of T. virens, T. viride and T. hamatum were screened under in vitro conditions pepper [3]. T. viride recorded highest percent inhibition of colony followed by P. against P. nicotianae var. parasitica for their antagonistic activity by using dual fluorescens against Phytophthora capsici [4]. Cell-free metabolites of T. virens culture method whereas bacterial bio-control agents, Bacillus subtilis and DAR 74290 completely inhibited growth of P. erythroseptica under in vitro Pseudomonas fluorescens were evaluated through streak plate method. conditions and appeared to be fungicidal [5].

International Journal of Agriculture Sciences ISSN: 0975-3710&E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 10, Issue 10, 2018 || Bioinfo Publications || 6109 Efficacy of Biocontrol Agents Against Phytophthora nicotianae var. parasitica, the Causal Organism of Buckeye Rot of Tomato

T. virens T. hamatum T. harzianum T. viride

B. subtilis P. fluorescens Control

Fig-1 In vitro evaluation biocontrol agents against Phytophthora nicotianae var. parasitica

Bacillus sp. and P. fluorescence showed 58 and 39 percent mycelial inhibition of *Research Guide or Chairperson of research: Dr Monica Sharma Phytophthora capsici, respectively [6]. Trichoderma harzianum was most effective University: Dr Yashwant Singh Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, in inhibiting the Phytophthora sp. which showed the maximum mycelial growth Nauni, Solan, 173230, Himachal Pradesh inhibition (66.67%) followed by T. viride (62.96 %). Pseudomonas fluorescens, Research project name or number: MSc Thesis Bacillus sp., T. hamatum and T. virens were effective in inhibiting the mycelial growth of to 57.78, 54.81, 54.44 and 51.85 per cent, respectively [7]. T. Author Contributions: All author equally contributed harzianum was effective against P. infestans [8]. Thus, above studies provide enough support to justify the antagonism of different fungal and bacterial Author statement: All authors read, reviewed, agree and approved the final biocontrol agents in present study against buckeye rot pathogen. Trichoderma manuscript spp. fortified composts had been used for management of Phytophthora nicotianae in pepper seedlings [9]. Trichoderma species produce metabolites Conflict of Interest: None declared which are effective against Phytophthora pathogens [10]. Trichoderma spp. mainly hyper parasite by coil, hooks, or appressorium-like structures around the pathogen Ethical approval: This article does not contain any studies with human mycelium [11]. Effectiveness of B. subtilis can be substantiated to the production participants or animals performed by any of the authors. of antimicrobial peptide substances such as subtilin, bacilysin, mycobacillisyn and iturin which caused changes in hyphal morphology including hyphal swelling, References distortion, and cytoplasm aggregation of P. capsici [6]. Further support to the [1] Gupta S.K. and Thind T.S. (2006) Disease Problems in Vegetable present finding can be ascribed to the findings of Jahagirdar [4] wherein it was Production. Scientific Publishers, Jodhpur, 576. established that antibiotic metabolites produced by bacterial antagonists penetrate [2] Vincent J.M. (1947) Nature, 159, 850. protoplasm resulting its dissolution and disintegration finally causing malformation [3] Anandaraj M., Sarma Y.R. and Venugopal M.N. (1995) Biological of mycelium. Control of Diseases of Spices (Anandraj M and Peter eds) Indian Institute of Spice Research, Calicut, 120. Table-1 In vitro efficacy of antagonists against Phytophthora nicotianae var. parasitica [4] Jahagirdar S. (1998) Etiology and management of foot rot of black Antagonists Mycelial growth inhibition (%) pepper (Piper nigrum). Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Plant Pathology, bc Trichoderma harzianum 68.52 (55.84) University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, 56. b Trichoderma hamatum 69.40 (56.39) [5] Etebarian H.R., Scott E.S. and Wicks T.J. (2000) European Journal of 67.43 (55.17)c Plant Pathology, 106, 329-337. Trichoderma viride [6] Ramkumar B.N., Nampoothiri K.M., Sheeba U., Jayachandran P., a Trichoderma virens 77.67 (61.77) Sreeshma N.S., Sneha S.M., Meenakumari K.S. and Sivaprasad P. d Bacillus subtilis 56.89 (48.94) (2015) Journal of BioScience and Biotechnology, 4,207-218. e Pseudomonas fluorescens 53.67 (47.08) [7] Bhaik A. (2017) Studies on Phytophthora fruit rot of apple and its (0.66) CD(0.05) management. M. Sc. Thesis, Department of Plant Pathology. Dr. Y.S. Figures in the parentheses are arc sine transformed values Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, 39-44. [8] Fatima K., Noureddine K., Henni J.E. and Mabrouk K. (2015) Application of research: The study will be helpful in developing non-chemical International Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural Research, 6 (4), disease management strategy for buckeye rot disease of tomato. 44-53. [9] Rose M., Raut I., Santisima-Trinidad A.B. and Pascual J. B. (2017) Research Category: Environment-friendly disease management PLoS ONE, 12(3), e0174069. [10] Bae S. J., Mohanta T. K., Chung J.Y., et al (2016) Biological control Abbreviations: % : per cent 92, 128-138. [11] Elad Y., Barak R. and Henis Y. (1983) Phytopathologische Zeitschrift Acknowledgement / Funding: Author thankful to Dr Yashwant Singh Parmar 107,168-175. University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, 173230, Himachal Pradesh

International Journal of Agriculture Sciences ISSN: 0975-3710&E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 10, Issue 10, 2018 || Bioinfo Publications || 6110