Recent advances in management strategies of vegetable diseases

Abstract

Vegetables are one of the most important components of human foods since they provide proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates and some other essential macro- and micronutrients required by the human body. Phytopathogenic diseases, however, cause huge losses to vegetables during cultivation, transportation and storage. To protect vegetable losses, various strategies including chemicals and biological practices are used worldwide. Pesticides among agrochemicals have however been found expensive and disruptive. Due to the negative health effects of chemical fungicides via food chain, the recent trend is shifting towards safer and more eco-friendly biological alternatives for the control of vegetable diseases. Of the various biological approaches, the use of antagonistic microorganisms is becoming more popular throughout the world due to low cost and environment safety. Numerous phytopathogenic diseases can now be controlled by microbial antagonists which employ several mechanisms such as antibiosis, direct parasitism, induced resistance, production of cell wall-lysing/cell wall-degrading enzymes, and competition for nutrients and space. The most commonly used biological control agents belong to the genera, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Flavobacterium, Enterobacter, Azotobacter, Azospirillum and Trichoderma, and some of the commercial biocontrol products developed and registered for the use against phytopathogens are Aspire, BioSave, Shemer etc. Here, an attempt is made to highlight the mechanistic basis of vegetable disease suppression by some commonly applied microbiota. This information is likely to help vegetable growers to reduce dependence on chemicals and to produce fresh and healthy vegetables in different production systems.