Enhancement of Seed Yield and Its Components in Some Promising Sesame Lines Using Antagonism of Trichoderma spp. Against Soil-borne Fungal Diseases

Biological control by Trichoderma spp. has been considered as a biocontrol agents to protect plants against diseases in several crops. Its environmentally friendly antagonists against plant pathogenic fungi, especially soil born fungi, compared with chemical control. Therefore, a pot experiment at the Experimental Plant Breeding Farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt was conducted over two years (2009 and 2010) to study the possibility of enhancement the yield and its components of sesame promising lines under soil-borne diseases using antagonism of Trichoderma spp. The experiment was established as a randomized complete block design with 3 replications. In general, the result of variance analysis showed that the effects of years (y), inoculation (i), promising sesame lines (Psl) and year x promising sesame lines (y x Psl) interactions were statistically significant in most measurements. The degree of Trichoderma antagonism varied against the soil borne of pathogens through the promising sesame lines, where reduced the growth of (percentage of infection) the three soil borne pathogens (F. oxysporum, M. phaseolina and R. solani) significantly and, therefore, can be incorporated for integrated disease management of pathogens. Moreover, inoculation sesame seeds by T. harzianum increased the yield and most of its yield components of sesame lines under artificial infection conditions by the fungal pathogens The results also showed that sesame line S1 and S6 recorded the highest values for number of fruiting branches/plant, number of capsules/plant, thousand seed weight, and single plant yield and lowest values for days to 50% flowering and maturity day when their seeds was inoculated by T. harzianum. Neither inoculated T. harzianum nor non-inoculated treatment affects on height of first fruiting branch and oil seed content over all ecological conditions of T. harzianum and fungal pathogens of evaluation. Based on these results, the sesame lines, S1, S6 and Taka 2 can be recommended for similar ecological conditions because of their high seed yield and yield components with their resistance to fungal pathogens in response to T. harzianum.