EVALUATION OF MYCOGENIC SILVER AND ZINC OXIDE NANOPARTICLES AS POTENTIAL CONTROL AGENT AGAINST EARLY BLIGHT (ALTERNARIA SOLANI) OF POTATO (SOLANUM TUBEROSUM L.)

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most important vegetable crops across world and India is second largest producer of this crop across the world. Early blight disease has been the most serious threat to world‟s potato production, resulting in 80-100 % yield loss. The causal agent of early blight is fungi, Alternaria solani. The present investigation was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of mycogenic silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZNOPs) as antifungal agents against A. solani. The nanoparticles were synthesized biologically by using Aspergillus flavus biomass and characterization was done by UV-Vis Spectroscopy, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS). The inhibition percentage of A. solani caused by nanoparticle treatments was established in vitro. Field experiment was conducted to compare the efficiency of nanoparticles and chemical fungicide at the parameters of disease severity, tuber number and tuber weight. The data were analyzed by SPSS for descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) including least significance difference (LSD) and results were found to be significant for different parameters at 0.05 significance levels. It may be concluded by the experiment that AgNPs and ZONPs may be proved to be potential fungicides in near future and it is an excellent alternative to chemical fungicides.