Management of gladiolus wilt by using leaves of allelopathic plants

The pot culture experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different allelopathic plants leaf materials on wilt of gladiolus caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp gladioli. The experiment was carried out at Plant Pathology Section, College of Agriculture, Nagpur during year 2018-2019, with two main Treatments viz., Levels of allelopathic M1 (2g leaves 100g soil), M2 (4g leaves 100g “soil), and M3 (6g leaves 100g soil) and five sub treatment allelopathic plants viz., Allium sativum, Ipomoea carnea, Annona innoxia, Eucalyptus globulus and Azadirachta indica were evaluated against Fusarium oxysporum. In vivo experiment Azadirachta indica treatment was found significantly superior and required minimum days to emergence of corms (15 days) and minimize the wilt incidence by 56.89% and mortality by 11.11% and also increased shoot length plant (35.10 cm plant), spike length plant (50.22 cm), number of leaves plant (5.73), number of flower spike¹ (7.21), number of corms plant¹ (6) and weight of corm (16.04 g) over Fusarium. Treatment M3 (6g leaves 100g -1 soil) showed minimum wilt incidence (55.01%) and mortality (22.22%) and maximum shoot length (35.45 cm plant ¹), spike length plant¹ (49.41 cm), number of leaves plant¹ (5.74), number of flowers spike (6.96), number of corms plant (6.29) and weight of corms (15.87 g pl¹) than that of M₂ treatment (4g leaves 100g soil) and M₁ treatment (2g leaves 100g soil). Thus, it is inferred that the incorporation of Azadirachta indica minimized wilt incidence, mortality and helped in increasing growth parameters of gladiolus crop.