Prevalence and Eco-friendly Management of Dry Rot of Potato in Rawalpindi and Islamabad

Abstract

The dry rot disease of potato is caused by Fusarium species is a disastrous disease of potato as postharvest disease that can contribute huge losses of potato during storage. During current study market based survey was done in Rawalpindi and Islamabad during year 2021to estimate the disease prevalence and diseases losses during storage of different potato verities in different months. It revealed that maximum dry rot disease prevalence of potato was 1.90%, 1.86% in Rawalpindi and Islamabad respectively. Fungi isolates were isolated from diseases samples and were preserved and identified on the basis of cultural and morphological keys. The pathogenicity test confirmed the virulence of pathogenic fungal isolates. Among the cultivars, average loss of dry rot of potato within the three months; August and September, October were found in cultivar Kuroda and Lady Rosetta was 1.36% and 1.21% respectively in Rawalpindi while 1.86% and 1.48% average loss was estimated in Kuroda and Lady Rosetta respectively in Islamabad. During disease management studies in which biocontrol agent (Pseudomonas fluorescence, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus cereus) were used during the dual culture technique and P. fluorescence was found most effective which reduced the 70% growth of fungal isolates and the maximum zone of inhibition 16mm was calculated. These preliminary postharvest disease studies will ultimately a source of information for the researchers and industrialist to develop cost effective and ecofriendly management against dry rot disease of potato during storage conditions.