Morphological Identification of Seed-borne Mycoflora associated with Bottle Gourd through Various Methods

Abstract

Seed-mycoflora are major biotic restraints to seeds. The purpose of this study was to identify the mycoflora and its incidence on seeds of different bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) varieties like Akash, Anmol, and Latto. The experiment was conducted in Complete Randomized Design (CRD) under factorial arrangement with three replicates. The seed-mycoflora of three different varieties of bottle gourd samples were investigated by using the ISTA-recommended agar plate and blotter paper method. The Agar plate method exhibited higher incidence of fungi followed by blotter paper method. The occurrence and incidence percentage showed that the Aspergillus flavus has high incidence percentage followed by Aspergillus niger, Penicillium spp., Alternaria alternata, Rhizopus stolonifer and Fusarium oxysporum from the seed samples of bottle gourd. The agar plate method turned out to be the most suitable method for identification of seed-mycoflora in vegetable seeds. Results of the study revealed more helpful for managing the seed-mycoflora of different vegetables. Our findings may also be effective in curing seed-borne diseases before sowing.