ECO-FRIENDLY MANAGEMENT OF FOOT AND ROOT ROT DISEASE OF LENTIL BY USING ORGANIC SOIL AMENDMENTS

Abstract

Lentil (Lens culinaris) is one of the oldest and most familiar food legumes in Bangladesh. Foot and root rot is very common disease in lentil. It causes seedling death at early stage resulting very poor plant stand which ultimately produces low yield. For eco-friendly management of the disease a field experiment was conducted at Central Farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka1207, during October 2019 to May 2020. Susceptible lentil variety BARI Masur1

was selected as planting material. The field experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Seven treatments were used as organic soil amendments viz. T 0 = Control, T 1 = Biofumigation with raddish leaf, T 2 = Biochar, T 3 = Vermicompost, T 4 = Mushroom compost-I, T 5 = Mushroom compost-II and T 6 = Trichocompost. The causal organism was isolated from naturally infected root of lentil and identified as Fusarium oxysporum by observing morphological and cultural characteristics. All organic soil amendments were applied after final soil preparation. Data were recorded on disease incidence, plant height, number of branches per plant, pods per plant, yield per plant and yield per plot. The lowest disease incidence (3.11%) was recorded in Trichocompost (T 6 ) at 60 DAS. The treatments also caused appreciable improvement of plant growth over control. The tallest plant (37.33 cm), maximum number of branches (28) per plant, maximum no. of pods (47.51), maximum seed weight per plant (0.67g), and the yield (564.99 g/plot) were also recorded from Trichocompost (T 6 ) treated plots followed by Vermicompost (T 3 ), Biochar (T 2 ) and Biofumigation with radish leaf (T 1 ). In this study it was found that soil amendments with Trichocompost showed most effective in controlling foot and root rot disease incidence with increasing yield of lentil. Furthermore, studies have to be conducted using these organic soil amendments to unfold the potential of other organic amendments in the management of foot and root rot of lentil.