IN-VITRO EVALUATION OF SEED TREATMENT BY COMMERCIAL FORMULATIONS OF TRICHODERMA ON SEEDLING QUALITY AND DROUGHT RESPONSES OF RICE

Abstract

A pot experiment was conducted in Net House at Department of Plant Pathology, Shere-Bangla

Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh during the period from January 2018 to April 2018 to evaluate seed treatment by different commercial Trichoderma formulations seedling quality and drought responses of rice following CRD with five replications. Two drought tolerant varieties BRRI dhan 56, 71 and one drought susceptible check variety IR 64 and six treatments viz. T = G-derma (powder), T 2 = Bioderma, T 3 = Recharge, T 4 = Decoprima, T ii 5 1 = G-derma (LDS) and T = Control were used in the experiment. Soil was sterilized by 2% formalin solutions. Seed related data was recorded on % seed germination, speed of germination (Germination Index), mean germination time (MGT), mean daily germination (MDG), peak value (PV) and germination value (GV). Moreover, data was recorded on seedling growth characteristics viz. number of leaves, number of tillers, plant height, shoot length, root length, fresh shoot and root weight, dry shoot and root weight, seedling vigor index (SVI) and seedling vegetative vigor (SVV) at different days after sowing. At 35 DAS, drought treatments were given and drought response data viz. droopy leaf, rolled leaf, drying leaf and drought sensitive scale was recorded at 4, 7, 10 and 13 days drought stress (DDS). The data were varied significantly among the treatments. Considering seed germinations parameters, T (Decoprima) showed the best results followed by Gderma

(powder) and Bioderma. However, in case of seedling growth, (Decoprima) showed the highest performance followed by G-derma (LDS) and Recharge. Moreover, the lowest drought responses were observed in Decoprima treated seeds followed by Gderma

(LDS) and Recharge. The findings revealed that, seed treatment with Trichoderma can mitigate short duration drought stress in rice plant. No disease was observed in rice seedlings due to sterilization of soils and treatments of seeds.