09-08-2013, 03:24 PM
Evaluation of brinjal germplasm against damping-off disease under nursery and pot conditions
ABSTRACT
Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) is a member of solanaceous family and a common vegetable crop grown all over the world. India is considered to be the centre of origin of brinjal. India is the second largest producer of brinjal in the world, next to China having acreage of 564 thousand hectares with an annual production of 9301 thousand MT (Anonymous, 2008). In Jammu and Kashmir State, Jammu province accounts for 950 hectares under brinjal cultivation with a total production of 13,775 MT. Diverse fungal and bacterial pathogens are responsible for causing a variety of seedling diseases leading to enormous pre and post-emergence seedling mortality at the nursery stage. None of the disease management techniques that are presently available are dependable to bring the population of soil-borne pathogens below the critical threshold in order to reduce seed and seedling diseases. Moreover, broad spectrum non-selective synthetic chemicals used for the management of these pathogens indiscriminately kill the beneficial soil microflora. Under such circumstances, resistant varieties of crop plants provide the only solution to evade such diseases. Hence search for resistant crop varieties is a continuous process. As such, the present investigations were undertaken to screen out the available germplasm of brinjal against damping off diseases at the nursery stage. Seventy two germplasm of brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) were screened against pre- and post-emergence damping-off caused by three major soil borne pathogens viz., Pythium aphanidermatum, Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp melongenae under nursery and pot experiments. None of the tested lines were found resistant against damping-off disease. However, Arka Nidhi recorded minimum mortality under nursery conditions, whereas Arka Nidhi, Arka Neelkanth, Arka Sheel, Arka Keshav recorded minimum mortality under pot conditions.