CONTROL OF SELECTED PLANT DISEASES WITH BIO CONTROL AGENTS IN UTTARAKHAND HILLS

Abstract

The future of organic farming and sustainable agriculture will increasingly rely on the integration of various biological and eco-friendly tools. Biological methods of farming are reducing the use of agrochemicals and their residues in the environment, water, soil and in food commodities. The present study focused on the major disease occurrence in cereals, pulses and off-season vegetable crops and effect of native and commercial bio-control agents (individual and consortium) on plant growth promoting activity and disease control. newlineA random survey was carried out in 22 different locations of Uttarakhand hills to observe disease occurrence and incidences. The survey results indicated disease incidence of root rot in vegetable Pea and French bean between 8.8 to 35.4 % and 5.4 to 29.4 % respectively. The infected root rot disease seedlings were collected and pathogens were isolated in the laboratory. The pathogenicity tests of causal organisms (pathogen of complex of root rot of Pea and French bean) were conducted by Koch s postulates method. Rhizoctonia solani, Fusarium solani and the complex of R. solani and F. solani was identified as a pathogen of root rot complex disease. Based on the prevalence and disease incidence root rot complex disease of vegetable Pea and French bean was selected for carrying out field experiments. newlineFrench bean and vegetable Pea are short duration crops which can be grown under different cropping patterns in Uttarakhand hills. During the survey, it has been observed that the crop losses are probably greater from root rot complex diseases than from any other type of diseases in Uttarakhand hills. Thus damage is usually severe in wet seasons. For control of root rot disease complex, experiments were conducted with eight treatments with three replications of each treatment, applying three bio-agents i.e. Trichoderma harzianum, Pseudomonas fluorescens and Trichoderma virens. Experiments were conducted in research block at State Training and Research Centre for Organic Farming Majkhali (Ranikhe