Plant diseases continue to cause severe damage to most agricultural crops resulting in heavy losses of both yield and quality. In addition the agricultural wastes cause real problems to get rid of them. Therefore, intensive concern was directed toward compost utilization, as they are available for no cost no side effect. So, in this study different suggested formulations of aerated compost tea in combination with pomegranate peel powder were evaluated for the possibility of using them as an environmentally safe alternative to fungicides. In vitro antifungal activity as well as, the in vivo probability of these combinations to suppress damping-off and wilt diseases caused by R. solani and F. oxysporum was done. Pathogens were isolated from diseased lupine plants with root rot and wilt symptoms. In vitro experiment results illustrated that high inhibition linear growth was obtained by compost/sour pomegranate tea prepared using alkaline water by up to 60% and 70% for F. oxysporum and R. solani respectively. Meanwhile, under field condition all tested combinations showed significant reduction in disease severity over un-composted control, indicated by low wilting and high survival % of lupine plants, no significant differences were detected between treatments. All compost treatments, in the field experiment, performed significantly better than the un-composted control in terms of growth parameters, NPK accumulation, yield and its components with no significant differences. Findings of this study suggest that mixture of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) peels extract with compost tea might be a promising combination for controlling phytopathogenic fungi and can be used as effective natural fungicide against two of the most dangerous soil-borne fungi looking for reducing the dependence on the chemical fungicides.
Key words: Lupine, F. oxysporum R. solani, compost tea, pomegranate peel.
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