Abstract
Trichoderma has gained attention as a promising bio-control agent owing to its effectiveness against a wide array of soil-borne plant pathogens. Successful introduction of bio-control agents to farmers is hindered mostly by unavailability of commercial preparation of Trichoderma bio-inoculate with a considerably higher shelf-life. The objectives of this investigation was to study the shelf-life of T. asperellum in selected liquid- and solid-based formulations and to find the suitability of cattle manure as a multiplication medium. Different carrier material including liquids and solids were tested for preparation of a commercial biological formulation of T. asperellum. The liquid carrier media tested in the present study were 1% sucrose, 1% peptone water, 1% tryptone broth, 1% tryptone soy broth and sterilized distilled water. Talc powder was tested as the solid carrier material. Cattle manure was incorporated with talc-Trichoderma formulation to check the suitability of cattle manure as a multiplying substrate. The initial spore count of each liquid formulation was maintained at 1.0x106 cfu/ml. At the end of 4th week, the mean viable spore counts of the tryptone broth, peptone water and tryptone soy broth used were 7.15x106 cfu/ml, 7.26x105 cfu/ml and 7.30x105 cfu/ml, respectively. From the 4th week onwards, the viable spore count of those three formulations could not be calculated due to heavy contaminations. In the 1% sugar solution and sterilized distilled water, spores were countable only till the end of 8th week of preparation and the counts were 2.5x104 cfu/ml and 2.6x103 cfu/ml, respectively. A talc-based formulation was prepared by mixing T. asperellum spore suspension (1.0x108 CFU/ml) with talc powder at three different levels (v/w); 30ml/100 g (T1), 40 ml/100 g (T2) and 50 ml/100 g (T3). Three months after storage, all the three treatments (T1, T2 and T3) yielded mean spore counts of 0.92x108 cfu/g, 1.11x108 cfu/g and 1.21x108 cfu/g, respectively. Talc powder inoculation with cattle manure was done at four different rates, i.e. 10 g/kg cattle manure (C1), 15 g/kg cattle manure (C2), 20 g/kg cattle manure (C3) and 25 g/kg cattle manure (C4). Cattle manure was identified as a potential multiplying substrate of the talc-based formulation of T. asperellum.
Highlights
Soil-borne plant pathogenic fungi cause significant economic losses to agricultural crops, in terms of yield quantity and quality
Preparation of T. asperellum liquid formulation: One week-old cultures of T. asperellum grown on potato dextrose agar (PDA) were used for the preparation of spore suspensions
ITS sequences of the sample was similar to T. asperellum sequence information deposited in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) data bank (ITI Test Report, Reference No CTS 1709084)
Summary
Soil-borne plant pathogenic fungi cause significant economic losses to agricultural crops, in terms of yield quantity and quality. Genus Trichoderma represents a widely studied fungi that show antagonistic activity towards soilborne pathogens (Kelaniyangoda et al 2003). The complete crop losses due to prevailing diseases result in increased uses of agrochemicals and thereby high cost of production. Biological control agents (BCAs) developed on the basis of mycelium and spores of fungi belonging to the genus Trichoderma have a long history of successful application in controlling plant diseases (Kolombet et al 2007). The costeffective large scale production, shelf life of formulation and consistency in disease control are the prime concerns with augmentative biological control. The major objectives of this study were to identify Trichoderma strain at species level and to evaluate the shelf-life of T. asperellum in soild- and liquid-based formulations
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