Evaluation of different fungicides for the management of sooty mould of cotton incited by Capnodium spp.

摘要

Cotton is the most important cash crop in India (Yadav et al., 2020) widely cultivated in more than 80 countries with production of 121.3 million bales (Bhandari et al., 2020). Indian economy is also greatly affected by cotton production (Yadav et al., 2021). India stands first followed by the China, USA and Pakistan in term of total cotton growing area (Anonymous, 2021). Among four cultivated cotton species two most importantly grown are Gossypium arboreum and G. herbaceum (Kulkami et al., 2009). More than 80 per cent of the cotton growing area is covered by tetraploid cotton (Khadi et al., 2010). G. hirsutum is the major tetraploid cotton which contributes about 90 per cent of the global premium quality cotton production (Brown and Ware, 2002; Liu et al., 2013). The introduction of the G. hirsutum in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) is known to be 200 years ago; however, its cultivation at large scale started parallel to industrial development in these countries (Rahman et al., 2014).