Integrated diseases management in groundnut for sustainable productivity

Abstract

Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is a major oilseed crop widely grown in tropical and subtropical regions of the world and is an important source of protein. Diseases pose a major threat to the production of groundnut each year, and prevention of disease in groundnut is a major concern for producers. Soil-borne diseases are especially complicated to manage due to the difficulty of dispersing fungicides through the groundnut canopy to the soil profile. Chemical control methods are ineffective and are not ecofriendly as they increase environmental and health hazards. Implementation of IDM (Integrated Disease Management) in developing countries is gaining momentum but still requires more serious efforts to achieve impact at the country or regional level. The success and sustainability of IDM strategy, especially with resource poor farmers, greatly depends on their involvement in helping generate locally specific techniques and solutions suitable for their particular farming systems and integrating control components that are ecologically sound and readily available to them. The biological control of soil-borne pathogens with antagonistic bacteria belonging to plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria like Pseudomonads, Bacillus, Rhizobium, etc., has received prominent attention because of the dual role of these bacteria in plant growth promotion and disease control. This chapter describes these developments and the variety of approaches that have been used to implement biological control as a useful tactic in IDM. It also describes how biological control interacts with other tactics and the potential for better integration into IDM programs.