Investigating the effectiveness of ginger and turmeric extracts on common soil-borne pathogens affecting plants

Abstract

Soil-borne viruses have crop production across the world, resulting in lower crop yields, poor crop performance, and rising production costs. Crop production has faced increased threats in recent years, including soil-borne disease epidemics, high chemical fungicide costs and the development of fungicide resistance, climate change, new disease outbreaks, and growing concern for both environmental and soil health. To address these infections, crop producers must implement integrated soil-borne disease control measures. In this work, two plant extracts (ginger and turmeric) were examined in vitro and in vivo for their ability to inhibit soil-borne pathogen mycelia development. Turmeric effectively suppressed the development of two pathogens when added to the two extracted extracts, with 74.59% inhibition against Fusarium sp and 73.49% inhibition against Rhizoctonia sp. Ginger extracts demonstrated a somewhat lower inhibitory activity against Rhizoctonia, with 73.58% inhibition at 50% concentration and 72.15% at 50% concentration. In vivo tests of turmeric extract against Rhizoctonia solani and Fusarium sp. were carried out to further the research. The data showed that using turmeric extract resulted in a substantial reduction in illness severity and incidence in both infections.