Abstract:
Trichoderma spp. widely used as biocontrol agents for
controlling a wide range of plant diseases. Banana
anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum musae is a prominent,
widely distributed postharvest disease. This study was
carried out to assess the effectiveness of locally isolated
Trichoderma virens against C. musae and the mass
production of T. virens using locally available, low-cost solid
substrates. T. virens was tested for the inhibition of C. musae
isolate in-vitro and in-vivo by dual plating and inoculating
into two varieties of ripened banana: Kolikuttu and
Cavendish, respectively. For mass production, T. virens was
inoculated into different solid substrates including scraped
coconut waste, sawdust, tea waste, seeds from rice, finger
millet, and maize, dried pieces of water hyacinth plant,
paddy straw, and Panicum maximum leaves; regularly taken
spore counts (cfu/g) and checked for viability by plating
after 12 weeks of storage. The pathogen inhibition
percentage by T. virens was 74.10%. Disease severity was
0% in Kolikuttu and 19% in Cavendish after 5 days of T. virens
spore application (1x107 spores/ml). Significantly higher
(p≤0.05) mean spore production resulted in rice seeds
(9.345x109 spores/g) compared to the other substrates and
the least resulted in sawdust (1.808x109 spores/g) at the 8th
week after T. virens inoculation. Spores of T. virens were
viable in all the tested substrates throughout the study
period. The results conclude that T. virens is capable of
controlling banana anthracnose and can be efficiently mass-
produced by using rice seeds, dried pieces of P. maximum
leaves, and finger millet seeds as substrates.
