Compost tea as soil drench: an alternative approach to control bacterial wilt in brinjal

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in the field laboratory, Department of Plant Pathology, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, to evaluate the efficacy of compost tea and poultry litter extract along with their economic feasibility of their usage in controlling bacterial wilt of brinjal under natural incidence condition. A significant variation was observed among the treatments on the incidence and severity of bacterial wilt in brinjal. The results showed that the lowest wilt incidence was recorded in T2 (Compost tea as soil drenching), T5 (Poultry litter as soil application) and T6 (IPM Lab Biopesticide as soil application) while the highest wilt incidence was recorded in control treatment in both counting periods. Similar trend regarding the performance of these treatments was observed on the bacterial wilt severity of brinjal. The effects of compost tea and poultry litter extract on the growth and yield parameters of eggplant were observed to be significant. The results revealed that plant height, number of branches per plant, number of fruits per plant and fruit yield per ha were recorded as maximum in T2 (Compost tea as soil drenching), followed by T5 (Poultry litter as soil application) and T6 (IPM Lab Biopesticide as soil application), while the minimum plant height, number of branches per plant, number of fruits per plant and fruit yield were recorded in control treatment (T1). The other treatments showed significant effect in increasing all the growth and yield parameters of brinjal as compared to control. Benefit cost analyses (BCR) showed that T6 (IPM Lab Biopesticide as soil application) resulted in the highest BCR (99.21) as compared to control, followed by T7 (BAU-Biofungicide as foliar spray) and T2 (Compost tea as soil drenching) with BCR 35.7 and 19.5, respectively. The results indicated that an investment of Tk. 1.00 may lead to a profit up to Tk. 99.21 by soil application of IPM Lab Biopesticide which gave the maximum profit in the present study. T7 (BAU-Biofungicide as foliar spray) followed T2 (Compost tea as soil drenching) where the investment Tk. 1.00 returned a profit of Tk. 35.70 and Tk. 19.5, respectively. Soil drenching of compost tea showed comparatively lower BCR but the highest percent increase of gross margin was obtained when compost tea was applied as soil drench (T2). Therefore, it may be concluded that soil drenching of compost tea may be an alternative approach to control bacterial wilt of brinjal along with other possible organic amendments.