OCCURRENCE OF SUDDEN DECLINE DISEASE OF DATE PALM (PHOENIX DACTYLIFERA L.) IN KHAIRPUR, PAKISTAN

Abstract

Date Palm tree is one of the most important fruit crop in Pakistan after mango and citrus, Date Palm crop is almost found in all regions of Pakistan. Since last two decades the plantation of date palm was extremely suffered from unknown etiology. Therefore, a study of seventeen date palm farms of district Khairpur, Pakistan was performed to find out the mortality of sudden decline of date palm disease and to isolate pathogen associated with the decline problem. On different growing areas of date palm, the death of plant assorted from 1 to 33%. different were isolated from different locations such as Fusarium solani, Helminthosporium sativum, Phoma ucladium Alternaria alternata highly frequent whereas Penicillium chrysogenium and Aspergilus niger were isolated from plant parts of infected date palm plants. Among them Fusarium solani was the major fungus occurred in very high level followed by Helminthosporium sativum and Phoma ucladium.