Examine Medicinal Plants from South Africa for Suppression of Meloidogyne Incognita Under Glasshouse Conditions
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JOURNAL OF NEMATOLOGY Article | DOI: 10.21307/jofnem-2020-029 e2020-29 | Vol. 52 Examine medicinal plants from South Africa for suppression of Meloidogyne incognita under glasshouse conditions Mbokota Candy Khosa1,*, Zakheleni Dube2, Dirk De Waele3, 4 and Mieke Stefanie Daneel1 Abstract 1Agricultural Research Council − The nematicidal activity of crudely milled powders of stems, leaves, Tropical and Subtropical Crops, and bulbs of Cassia abbreviata, Cissus cactiformis, Euphorbia ingens, Private Bag X11208, Mbombela Ipomoea kituiensis, Synadenium cupulare, Senna petersiana, Urigenia 1200, South Africa. sanguinea, Maerua angolensis, and Tabernaemontana elegans on eggs and J2 population densities of Meloidogyne incognita race 2 2School of Biology and on tomato was examined under glasshouse conditions. These plant Environmental Sciences, University species have medicinal properties and are being used in South Africa of Mpumalanga, Private Bag X11283, by traditional healers as so-called “muti.” All plant species showed a Mbombela 1200, South Africa. suppressive effect. Relative to untreated control, the soil amendments 3Unit for Environmental Sciences consistently suppressed M. incognita population densities in tomato and Management, North-West roots and the reproductive potential (RP) of the nematode. When University, Private Bag X6001, compared to fenamiphos, a commercial systemic chemical nematicide, Potchefstroom 2520, South Africa. the soil amendments performed comparable or better in suppressing nematode populations in the root systems in 2008 and 2009, but 4Laboratory of Tropical Crop fenamiphos performed better than all soil amendments in 2011. The Improvement, Department of RP of M. incognita was comparable for both soil amendment- and Biosystems, Faculty of Bioscience fenamiphos-treated plants. No consistent trend in the effect of the soil Engineering, University of Leuven amendments on plant root and shoot bioweight was observed, except (KU Leuven), Willem de Croylaan when plants were treated with T. elegans-based soil amendments and 42, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium. both root and shoot bioweight were consistently higher compared *E-mail: [email protected] with untreated control plants. Our results show that the plant species examined are potential sources of phytonematicides effective against This paper was edited by M. incognita race 2. Koon-Hui Wang. Received for publication June 15, 2019. Keywords Phytonematicide, plant growth, reproductive potential, root-knot nematodes, soil amendments. In South Africa (SA), the majority of the rural and extremely important limiting factor in vegetable pro- peri-urban populations depend for their daily dietary duction (Hallmann and Meressa, 2018). food needs on vegetables, grains, and leguminous Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) is one of the crops produced mainly in household and community most common vegetables grown in SA (FAO, 2017). gardens, and on smallholder farms (Aliber, 2009). In Tomato can be infected by a wide variety of plant-par- this resource-poor agricultural sector, available land is asitic nematodes but predominantly by root-knot often limited and, therefore, frequently re-used, which nematodes which can cause significant yield losses not only degrades the quality of the soil but also ag- (Jones et al., 2017). A nematode survey in rural and gravates soil disease and pest problems (Aliber, peri-urban households, community and school gar- 2009). Plant-parasitic nematodes, especially root-knot dens, as well as smallholder fields in SA showed that nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.), are worldwide an root-knot nematodes are the predominant biotic factor © 2020 Authors. This is an Open Access article licensed under the Creative 1 Commons CC BY 4.0 license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Medicinal plants in Meloidogyne incognita control: Khosa et al. affecting the production of vegetables: 48 of 51 sites cactus), Euphorbia ingens E. Mey. ex Boiss. (gewone sampled were infested with root-knot nematodes melkboom, naboom), Ipomoea kituiensis (Burm.) Merr. (Mtshali et al., 2002). Most of the commercial tomato (kitui morning glory), Maerua angolensis DC. (bead- varieties grown in SA are susceptible to Meloidogyne bean tree), Senna petersiana (Bolle) Lock. (wild senna, incognita race 2 and M. javanica (Fourie et al., 2001). monkey pod), Synadenium cupulare (Boiss.) Wheeler Nematicide application is usually effective in re- ex A. C. White (dead-man’s tree), Tabernaemontana ducing plant-parasitic nematode population densi- elegans Stapf (toad tree), and Urginea sanguinea ties below damage threshold levels (Desaeger et al., Shinz. (rooislangkop) on growth of tomato plants and 2017) in the short term but resource-poor peri-urban suppression of population densities of M. incognita and rural tomato growers do not have the means to race 2 under glasshouse conditions. purchase nematicides which are often expensive. Also, many of these chemicals are banned from the market because they are highly toxic to animals and Materials and methods humans, posing a serious threat to the environment and dangerous to handle (Jones, 2017). To alleviate Collection of plant material and the nematode problem and secure food security, al- preparation of pow dered leaf meals ternative low-input, accessible, affordable and envi- Stems, leaves, and bulbs of C. abbreviata, ronment-friendly nematode management practices C. cactiformis, E. ingens, I. kituiensis, M. angolensis, need to be developed and implemented. S. petersiana, S. cupulare, T. elegans, and The need for discovering less toxic and U. sanguinea were collected from traditional healers environmental-friendly substitutes for commercial in the Mopani and Vhembe districts, Limpopo nematicides created an opportunity for alternative Province, SA. The botanical origin of the plant parts products such as phytonematicides (botanical was identified and confirmed by a botanist from the nematicidals, bionematicides) (Ntalli and Caboni, South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI, 2012; Caboni and Ntalli, 2014). The basic materials for Pretoria). The plant parts were chopped into 5-cm- the development of phytonematicides were usually long pieces and oven-dried for four days at 52°C collected from locally available plants (Mashela prior to grinding in a Wiley mill and passed through a et al., 2017). Fresh or dried, crudely milled, ground 1-mm-aperture sieve (Makkar, 2003). Crudely milled or infused plant material of, for instance castor bean plant materials of 25 kg were stored in bulk in marked, (Ricinus communis L.) and wild cucumber (Cucumis air-tight glass containers at room temperature in myriocarpus Naudin) produce phytonematicides the dark until they were used for the trials. Cucumis that can suppress root-knot nematode population myriocarpus material, obtained from the Nematology densities (Mashela, 2002; Mashela and Nthangeni, Laboratory, University of Limpopo, Sovenga, SA, 2002; Dandurand et al., 2017). was included in the trials as a reference treatment So-called “muti” are African traditional medicines (Mashela, 2002) together with the commercial that make use of various natural products derived nematicide fenamiphos. Soil amendments of from trees and other plant species. These botanical C. myriocarpus had been reported to suppress the medicines are usually prescribed by an inyanga or population densities of M. incognita (Mashela, 2002). herbal healer and they are mostly endemic to Southern Africa. In SA, traditional healers use these mutis at controlled dosage rates to treat humans and domestic Preparation of nematode inoculum animals for various ailments (Van Wyk et al., 2009). The medicinal effects of these muti lead us to the hypothesis A population of M. incognita race 2, of which the iden- that they might be toxic to small soil-dwelling organisms tification was confirmed by sequence-characterized such as plant-parasitic nematodes. These muti, as well amplified regions-polymerase chain reaction (Zijlstra as supplies of dried and finely ground material made et al., 2000; Fourie et al., 2001), was obtained from from them, are abundant in the rural areas of the the Agricultural Research Council (ARC)-Grain Crops lowveld in Mpumalanga, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal research institute, Potchefstroom, SA, and multi- provinces of SA. This discovery could be a significant plied during two months in a separate glasshouse on contribution toward sustainable crop production in the plants of the susceptible tomato cultivar Floradade. resource-poor agricultural sector of these provinces. To obtain the inoculum, nematode eggs and infec- The objective of this study was to evaluate crudely tive second-stage juveniles (J2) were extracted from milled powders of different parts of Cassia abbreviata the tomato roots by shaking the roots in a 1% NaOCl Oliv. (sjambok pod), Cissus cactiformis Gilg. (cucumber solution followed by sieving (Hussey and Barker, 1973) 2 JOURNAL OF NEMATOLOGY and passage through a set of nested sieves with ap- was recorded and the fresh shoot weight was calcu- ertures from top to bottom of 150, 63, 38, and 25 μ m. lated as the average of the two plants per pot. The root systems were carefully removed from the soil, Trial set-up cleaned under running tap water, and the fresh root weight recorded. To extract the nematode eggs and The trials were carried out in a glasshouse at the J2, the root systems of the two plants were cut into ARC-Tropical and Subtropical Crops research institute 1-cm-pieces and mixed thoroughly. A sub-sample