In-Vitro Efficacy of Trichoderma viride Against Sclerotium rolfsii and Macrophomina phaseolina

The fungal pathogen causes serious widespread losses to agricultural crops worldwide. Therefore, economy of countries may worsen especially of developing countries. In addition, harmful chemical pesticides which are being used today for increasing crop production creates very serious health hazardous problems to human beings and ecosystem as a whole. The antagonistic potential of Trichoderma species which has been long known to control various soil-borne fungal pathogens in biological way may be utilized. The faster growth rates with which it competes with fungal pathogen mainly brings upon their antagonistic characteristics. An investigation was carried out in laboratory condition towards biological efficacy of T. viride on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium for the bio-control of soil-borne plant pathogens Sclerotium rolfsii and Macrophomina phaseolina in in-vitro condition. The dual culture technique was followed in which T. viride showed significant antifungal activities towards both the pathogens. T. viride significantly inhibited the mycelial radial growth of S. rolfsii by 75% and M. phaseolina by 71.42%. The results showed variable mycelial growth rate for all fungal isolates which was determined after 6 days of incubation in which T. viride showed minimum of 4.00 days to completely cover the petri-plates and S. rolfsii showed 4.33 days whereas M. phaseolina showed 6.33 days. Thus, T. viride showed encouraging results regarding their biopesticidal and biofungicidal potential against plant pathogens which may be endorsed to substitute harmful chemical supplements that exists in modern day agricultural practices.