Cigar end rot of banana caused by Musicillium theobromae and its control in Egypt

摘要

Cigar end rot is a postharvest disease affecting the fruits quality of banana. Different fungal pathogens are involved but the main pathogen associated with the fruits is Musicillium theobromae. The adjectives of this study were (i) to isolate and identify the causal agent of cigar end rot of banana in Egypt, (ii) finding and evaluating the effectiveness of alternatives' means of control the causal agent using certain compounds including salts, hydrogen peroxide and nanomaterials in vitro and in vivo. Twelve salts; hydrogen peroxide with five concentrations (0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0%) and five nanomaterials at two concentrations (0.2 and 0.4%) were tested in vitro against the mycelial growth of M. theobromae. The results demonstrated that naturalincidence of cigar end rot disease was higher during 2018 as compared to 2017 season. In vitro results showed that, a complete inhibition of the pathogen was obtained by sodium metabisulphite at all tested concentrations while a complete inhibition wasdetected for sodium silicate at 4%. Also, silica-copper nanoparticles (NPs) and sil-ica-chitosan-copper NPs showed the best results as compared to other treatments reduced the colony diameter by 50.8 and 51.5% at 0.2%. On artificially inoculated banana fruit, sodium silicate, sodium metabisulphite, sodium carbonate, chitosan NPs, silica- copper NPs, silica-chitosan-cop-per NPs, copper NPs and silica NPs reduced the percentage of cigar end rot severity by 87, 85, 79, 69, 67, 53, 54 and 49%, respectivelyas compared to control.