Bioefficacy Study of Bacillus subtilis Based Biofungicide on Leaf Spot Disease, Growth and Yield Attributes of Tomato [Solanum lycopersicum L.] CV. Arka Vikas

The present study entitled “Bioefficacy study of Bacillus subtilis based biofungicide on leaf spot disease, growth and yield attributes of tomato [Solanum lycopersicum L.] cv. ArkaVikas” was conducted at Vegetable Research Farm, Department of Horticulture, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi during rainy season of 2016-17 in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications. The treatments included foliar spray of chemical fungicide (Copper oxychlooride) and biofungicide (Taegro® and Trichoderma) either alone or in combination. Taegro® is a bacterial biofungicide containing 1×1010 CFU/g (13%w/w) of Bacillus amyloliuefaciens strain FZB24 formulated as WP. A total of 12 characters including disease, growth and yield parameters were studied. Disease parameter included leaf spot disease incidence (%) and disease severity (%) whereas growth and yield parameters included days to 50% flowering, height, number of branches per plant, fruit length (cm), fruit width (cm), number of fruits per plant, average fruit weight (g), number of seed per fruit, fruit yield per plot (kg), fruit yield per hectare (kg) were studied. The biofungicide Taegro exhibited significant potential in reducing the leaf spot in tomato and improving the growth and yield attributes of tomato as compared to control. But combined used of Taegro with standard chemical copper oxychloride gave better result than Taegro alone. As a consequence, this may be used as part of an integrated disease management approach so as to minimizes the use of standard fungicides and also protect the environment from pollution and maintenance of the human health.