Trichoderma-fortified compost in controlling diseases and increasing yield of tomato

Abstract

An attempt was made to reduce the tomato disease severity caused by several fungal pathogens in the field conditions and increase the growth and yield of tomato through the application of different concentrations of Trichoderma-fortified compost. The antagonism of the tested stock culture isolate of TH 7 of T. harzianum was found to be stable in its antagonistic character and observed more than 90% growth inhibition of all the tested pathogens. Based on the confirmation of the repeated antagonism test, the highly antagonist isolate of T. harzianum TH 7 was selected to prepare the Trichoderma-fortified compost. In the field experiment, post-emergence seedling mortality was completely free whereas Trichoderma-fortified compost at 300 g colonized Trichoderma was used in the treatment T6. All other doses of Trichoderma-fortified compost reduced the seedling mortality 60 to 80% and 20% reduction of seedling mortality was observed in the treatment T1 where compost was used without Trichoderma. Early blight, collar rot and southern blight, root rot and Fusarium wilt are also recorded in the field from the growing stage to the last harvesting period. All the diseases were completely controlled with the treatment T6 except early blight, where the highest reduction was 75% with the treatment T6 and T5. A similar trend of reduction of diseases was observed in the case of other treatments. Although, anthracnose was not observed in the tomato plants but at the ripening stage of the crop 2.5% tomato fruits were infected with anthracnose disease. Tomato fruits in the field were completely free from anthracnose fruit rot in the treatment T6. The treatments T4 and T5 reduced 75% and 80% anthracnose fruit rot in the field condition. All the treatments significantly increased the growth-promoting components in comparison to the untreated control in the treatment T8 where no supplements were added. Significantly the highest 28.08% yield was recorded in treatment T6 followed by 21.67% increased yield in Treatment T5. The highest quantity of tomato was harvested at the 3rd harvest in the case of all the treatments.