Identifying The Cause of Dracaena Plant Wilt Disease in Iraq and Testing Some Nanomaterials Against It

The experiments were conducted at the College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, Plant Protection Department, University of Baghdad. Morphological identification of the pathogen agent revealed it to be the Fusarium oxysporum fungus. Identification was also affirmed molecularly using the general primers ITS1/ITS4 which yielded a 500 bp band of molecular weight when amplifying the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region in the most pathogenic isolate using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A hit of 100% identity was achieved with the worldwide isolates in the NCBI GenBank. Sequencing data obtained from the fungal isolate were submitted to the gene bank with accession number PP273503. These data revealed that the isolates ranged from highly to weakly pathogenic. Both general and nanoparticle iron and copper oxides could prevent the growth of the pathogenic fungus. The treatment with nano iron oxide recorded the highest inhibition rate of 100% at 3% concentration showing no fungal growth compared to S. copper oxide’s at 77.0% for the same concentration. The findings also confirmed that both materials offered 100% control of fungal development on the Dracaena leaves in a laboratory setting at 0.0 cm2 compared to 70.91 mm2 and 75.88 mm2 in the ordinator iron and copper oxide treatments, respectively. The materials showed the ability to control the fungus when applied with iron and copper oxide at 69.88% and 67.77% in the Dracaena plants, 0% in the treatment containing only the pathogenic fungus, and 100% with the nano iron and copper oxide treatment