Vol. 10, Issue 11 (2021)

Author(s):
Jegan KP, Kavino M, Aneesa Rani MS, Nakkeeran S and R Saravanan

Abstract:
Banana (Musa spp) is one among the most important tropical fruits in terms of productivity and trading. Among the various banana cultivars, Ney poovan (AB) is being widely cultivated because of its sweet and sub acid flavour of the fruit. Cultivation and productivity of Ney poovan (AB) is seriously threatened by Fusarium wilt caused by destructive soil borne fungi Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc). In order to assess the virulence of pathogen, in the present study, we characterized the fusarium wilt pathogen collected from four different banana growing regions of Tamil Nadu. PCR amplification of Fusarium genomic DNA with Internal Transcribed Spacer region 1 and 4 resulted that all four isolates were confirmed as Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc). In order to test verify the antifungal efficacy of select bacterial endophytes viz., Brachybacterium paraconglomeratum YEBPT2 (MK263736), Brucella melitensis YEBPS3 (MN022548), Bacillus velezensis YEBBR6 (MT372157), Bacillus amyloliquefaciens YEBFL3 (MT326231) and Myroides odaratimimus YEBRT3 (MN082530) of banana against Foc, in vitro screening was performed by dual plate method. The bacterial endophyte, Brachybacterium paraconglomeratum YEBPT2 significantly suppress the mycelial growth of Foc up to 61.56 per cent and produce diverse number of antifungal bioactive metabolites like Fluorouracil, Azetidine, Hydroxysulfonyl-3,4,4-trimethyl-2-azetidinone, Quinazoline, Isoxazolemethanol, Pteridine, Formic acid, Ethyl isopropyl phosphonothiolate, Diethyltrisulphide, Acetohydrazide, Pyrazine, Ticlopidine, Hexadecanoic acid, Cyclopentadecane and Propanedioic acid. Hence, Brachybacterium paraconglomeratum YEBPT2 based consortia may be developed to contain Fusarium wilt under field conditions.