Management of the soil-borne fungal pathogen – Verticillium dahliae Kleb. causing vascular wilt diseases

Abstract

Vascular wilt diseases caused by Verticillium dahliae Kleb. are difficult to control and lead to increasing losses of many crops worldwide. It can cause disease on not only horticultural crops but also many economically important crops such vegetables, legumes, forest trees, woody and herbaceous plants. Reasons of this situation are various: (i) the specialization of crop production resulted in the accumulation of the pathogen in the soil, especially monoculture production; (ii) the lack of an efficient and safe soil fumigation method; (iii) the production in large amounts of survival structures—microslerotia and melanized hyphae that are resistant to chemical and biological degradation. Due to the lack of effective synthetic agents for eradication of V. dahliae from soil, considerable interest in this paper has been focused on biological control, especially the selection of microorganisms with mycoparasitic activity towards V. dahliae microsclerotia, that can decrease their number in soil. The main attention is paid on the Trichoderma fungi, non pathogenic Fusarium spp., Talaromyces flavus and bacteria Bacillus spp., Pseudomonas spp. and Streptomyces spp. that are discussed in this review. In this work the suppressive effect of organic amendments against this soil-borne pathogen is also mentioned. In addition biofumigation using toxic plant materials, which is an approach to the soil-borne pathogen management could be an effective method to control diseases caused by V. dahliae.