The in vitro effect of antagonistic fungus trichoderma spp On sclerotium rolfsii a bean pathogen.

Abstract

Trichoderma spp. are used as antagonists against different pathogens. Despite many possibilities of using Trichoderma as an antagonist, there are gaps in the knowledge of the interaction between Trichoderma and Sclerotium rolfsii, a bean pathogen. Antimicrobial products have been used widely to combat plant diseases. Most microorganisms possess such a potential. A one such Trichoderma was used in this study. Trichoderma was extracted from the soil and extracted by performance of serial dilutions and cultured on PDA plates Identification by morphology and isolation were done to obtain Trichoderma from the colonies. On isolation, the dual plate technique was used to investigate the in vitro effect on another fungal plant pathogenic strain of beans, Sclerotium rolfsii Sclerotium rolfsii was obtained from NACCRI beans programme. Growth on the dual plate showed an inhibitory effect of Trichoderma spp. on the growth of Sclerotium rolfsii from the sixth day. On a dual plate, the observed tendency was that after day 6, the Sclerotium rolfsii coverage started receding back. This was possibly due to antimicrobial compounds produced by the Trichoderma spp. There was 60.31% inhibition on day 7 which increased to an 87.14% on day 8. This data was statistically highly significant and the null hypotheses was rejected. Unlike in many previously done experiments that suggest Trichoderma growing over other pathogenic fungal strains, the presented scenario in this particular experimental set up suggested an inhibitory effect.