Pseudomonas based Formulation for Biocontrol of Sclerotium rolfsii causing Collar rot of Chickpea

Author: Ritesh Kumar*, Priya Bhargava and Diksha Sinha

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Abstract

Collar rot disease caused by soil borne fungus, Sclerotium rolfsii is an important disease of chickpea that causes significant losses every year. The soil borne nature of pathogen makes it difficult to manage by the use of other management practices except biocontrol agents due to its various mechanism of action. The present investigation is on antagonistic ability of Pseudomonas fluorescens, a potent Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR), isolated from the root zone Amaranthus viridis, against collar rot pathogen. The PGPR reflected good antagonistic activity against five different soil borne plant pathogenic fungi viz. Sclerotium rolfsii, Rhizoctonia solani, Fusarium solani, F. oxysporum and Botrytis cinerea, and showed maximum inhibition (70.56%) against S. rolfsii and minimum against F. solani (33.61%). The talcum based formulation of the PGPR, showed highest population of 9.07 Log CFU g-1 in the formulation after 1 month while decreased gradually with increase in storage mon

Keywords

Disease incidence, PGPR, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Soil-borne plant pathogens, Talc.