Influence of Soil Properties on Wilt Incidence of Water Melon, Tomato and Marigold
Bhupendra Kumar Singh
Department of Botany, University of Allahabad, Allahabad – 211 002, U.P., India.
Vinit Pratap Singh
School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara - 144 411, Punjab, India.
Seweta Srivastava *
School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara - 144 411, Punjab, India.
Abhay Kumar Pandey
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad- 502 324, India.
D. N. Shukla
Department of Botany, University of Allahabad, Allahabad – 211 002, U.P., India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum affects a wide variety of hosts of any age by causing wilt disease. The aim of this present work was to evaluate the role of soil texture, moisture, pH, and temperature against the wilt incidence of watermelon, tomato and marigold. Observations revealed that sandy soil with supported highest wilt incidence of water melon, tomato and marigold compared to silt clay soil. It should be significantly highest infection was noticed at soil pH6 while pH9. Furthermore, to evaluate the effect of soil moisture on occurrence of disease incidence, the pots containing water melon, tomato and marigold plants were irrigated after 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 days interval. It was reported that the plants which were irrigated after the interval of two days showed less disease incidence. It means that if we increase the interval of irrigation then the disease incidence will ultimately increased i.e., as same as shown by the interval of ten days.
Keywords: Soil, wilt, watermelon, tomato, marigold.