Abstract:
Cashew (
Anacardium occidentale L.) is popularly known as the ‘Gold mine’ of wasteland. Initially, it was considered as a suitable crop for soil conservation, afforestation and also wasteland development but gradually gained commercial importance. In cashew cultivation, production and processing, Odisha stands third in India, claiming 16% of land under cashew cultivation area at 1.68 Lakh hectares and producing 1,00,000 MT of raw cashew nut (13.6% of India's raw cashew nut production). Cashew is infected by more than 20 diseases worldwide. Among the diseases, anthracnose caused by
Colletotrichum gloeosporioides (Penz.), perfect stage
Glomerella cingulata (Ston.) Spauld. & Schrenk is a serious menace in cultivation of cashew causing economic loss in Odisha. The present investigation was carried out with an objective to study the efficacy of some bio-control agents in
in-vitro condition. Four antagonistic microorganisms like
Trichoderma viride, Trichoderma harzianum, Trichoderma hamatum and
Pseudomonas fluorescens were maintained
in medium of potato dextrose agar and evaluated for their antagonistic effect under
in-vitro condition against
Colletotrichum gloeosporioides by dual culture technique. It has been found that the maximum growth inhibition was seen in case of
Trichoderma viride (84.9%) followed by
T. harzianum (77.4%). However, least inhibition of 74.5% was recorded in
T. hamatum. However the testing of bio-control agents may be carried out under field condition for further confirmation.