Efficacy of carbendazim and other fungicides against Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici causing wilt of tomato

Wilt of tomato caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici is becoming the cause of concern for tomato growing farmers as it has devastated around 80% crop in some instances. Farmers usually prefer chemical treatment over other methods applying various fungicides. In the present study, eleven Fusarium isolates were collected from tomato fields across various tomato-growing regions of Maharashtra. The efficacy of fungicide like carbendazim is evaluated against the collected Fusarium isolates. A minimum inhibitory concentration of carbendazim against all the isolates was measured outfor all the eleven isolates. The sensitivity of the isolates ranged from 7μg/ml to 750μg/ml. Isolate Fol-1 showed lowestminimum inhibitory concentration while isolate Fol-7 showed highest minimum inhibitory concentration. Then the isolates with more MIC values were subjected to successive passages on plates containing carbendazim. Additionally, the passages are alternated between carbendazim and other fungicides. The results demonstrated that continuous exposure to carbendazimled to reduced fungal responsiveness to fungicide while inhibition of fungal growth was observed on the alternating fungicides.