GROWTH PROMOTION AND ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF SOIL AMENDMENTS AGAINST FUSARIUM WILT OF PEPPER

Abstract

Due to the environmental and health hazards posed using chemical fungicides in controlling Fusarium wilt of many crops, a study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of soil amendments in suppressing the growth of Fusarium oxysporum and promoting the growth of Capsicum frutescens var. baccatum and C. frutescens var. maximum. The experiment was carried out at the laboratory and screen house of Pure and Applied Botany, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB). The screenhouse experiment was conducted in a completely randomized block design with ten treatments, consisting of four soil amendments (sawdust, biochar, spent mushroom compost and Bradyrhizobium sp.) applied singly or mixed, and three replicates per treatment. Data on plant height (PH), leaf number (LN), number of nodes (NN) and disease severity were obtained bi-weekly and were analyzed using one-way ANOVA at - p < 0.05. The PH of Capsicum frutescens var. baccatum ranged from 10.30 to 16.60 cm, LN 11.73 to 43.73; NN 1.81 to 5.88 and disease severity 2.88 to 3.86 while for C. frutescens var. maximum, the PH ranged from 8.42 to 13.31 cm; LN from 8.33 to 31.37; NN 1.10 to 3.75 and disease severity between 3.88 to 4.45 and there were significant differences in the growth of pepper varieties assessed for each amendment at different concentrations. Conclusively, treatments with biochar and Bradyrhizobium sp. promoted the growth of the two pepper varieties and inhibited the disease progression of Fusarium wilt.