Effect of Plant Mineral Nutrition on Tomato Plant Infected with Meloidogyne Incognita Under Greenhouse Conditions

Abstract

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is one of the most important vegetable plants in the world.Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne incognita) causing problems in all growing tomato areas in Egypt. The use of such mineral nutrients is the most environmentally successful method for limiting root-knot nematode damage. In this study seven plant mineral nutrients i.e. calcium sulphate, zinc sulphate, magnesium sulphate, iron sulphate, potassium sulphate N.P.K(20:20:20) and urea (5g/pot each) separately were evaluated comparing with oxamyl on root-knot nematode (1000 second stage juveniles/ pot each) infecting tomato plant cv. Castle Rock under greenhouse conditions (19±3ºC). Calcium sulphate showed the maximum values in improving total plant fresh weight (65.0%), plant length (80.2%), shoot dry weight (97.2%) and number of leaves per plant (24.2%), with the highest reduction percentage in nematode population density that averaged 92.3%, followed by that of urea application (85.5%), respectively. Rates of nematode build-up under the stress of seven mineral nutrients and oxamyl were adversely affected. Such rates ranged between 0.1 to 1.8 vs 4.2 for nematode alone. Namely, calcium sulphate treatment had reasonable lower value of reproduction, (0.3) while, that of zinc sulphate had the highest one (1.8), whereas oxamyl recorded a lowest rate (0.1), respectively. Oxamyl as a systemic nematicide ranked second to calcium sulphate in suppressing nematode population density (88.7%), and ranked first in diminishing galls and eggmasses numbers with values of 88.2 and 100.0%, respectively.

Meloidogyne incognita population control and nutritional status and productivity of Thompson seedless grapevines managed with different treatments

“…Calcium sulfate application also resulted in a high reduction of M . incognita population density and improved tomato vegetative parameters [ 76 ].…”

“…Pathogens growth and their chances to cause infection increase at higher sugar levels flowing from the cytoplast to the apoplast, a process that occurs mainly at low calcium levels. Besides, calcium ions can significantly inhibit the activity of the extracellular pectolytic enzymes (e.g., galacturonase) produced by various plant pathogens, thus preventing the middle lamella degradation and contributing to cell wall stability [75,76]. It has been found that an increased calcium supply to plants promotes root cell resistance and thus reduces nematodes invasions to roots [75,76].…”

“…For instance, calcium carbide addition reduced the number of galls, egg masses, and juveniles of M. incognita in zucchini, and it led to crop yield increases, which were positively correlated to the application rates [77]. Calcium sulfate application also resulted in a high reduction of M. incognita population density and improved tomato vegetative parameters [76].…”

Impact of nematode infestation on nutritional quality of some underground vegetables in Pakistan

“…Previous studies viz., El-Sherif et al, (2014) and Chandra et al, (2010), have also shown that M. incognita infection causes decrease in different growth parameters like root and shoot length, weight of fresh and dry root and shoot in different plants. Our findings also confirms the decreased growth parameters and increased number of gall formation i.e., inversely proportional to each other as earlier stated by Khan et al, (2013).…”