Symptomatology, Isolation, Identification and Pathogenicity Test of Alternaria Blight of Safflower Gholve V.M.*, Taware M.R., Wagh S.S. Department of Plant Pathology, V.N. Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth, Parbhani-431 402, Maharashtra, India *email: vikramgholve@rediffmail.com
Online published on 13 January, 2016. Abstract Alternaria carthami is one of the most destructive pathogen, causing blight disease in safflower and thereby inflicting accountable quantitative as well as qualitative losses. Typical symptoms of the blight disease on safflower includes dark necrotic lesions 2–5 mm in diameter are firstly found on hypocotyls and cotyledons. The mature plant showing the characteristics and diagnostic symptoms of the disease are the irregular, dark brown spot with concentric ring upto 1 cm in diameter appear on leaves. The test pathogen Alternaria carthami was isolated from naturally infected leaves of safflower on Potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium. The colonies developed were olivaceous blackish, loose cottony and wooly growth mycelium having little aerial growth. Pathogenicity of Alternaria carthami was proved on forty five days old plants of safflower Cv. Manjira. Based on typical symptoms produced on artificially inoculated safflower Cv. Manjira, cultural characteristic, microscopic observation and pathogenicity test; the fungus was identified as Alternaria carthami, the cause of Alternaria blight of safflower. Top Keywords Safflower, symptomatology, isolation, pathogenicity test, Alternaria blight. Top |