Tomato is one of the important vegetable crops. The problem of seedling establishment is found in tomato due to several soil borne diseases. One of them is root rot caused by Fusarium oxysproum. There are many chemical methods available to control this disease, but use of chemicals deplete the soil micro-environment and causes soil and water pollution and also do not fit within the framework of ‘Organic farming’. Seed priming with certain phytochemicals may be an economic and ecofriendly alternative to such chemicals. In present study we primed tomato seeds with leaf extract of six different plants (White musale, Periwinkle, Neem, Wood apple, Lantana and White cedar). Different leaf extracts of dose of 2% was taken independently for seed priming. We found that priming with White musale, Periwinkle, Neem and wood apple leaf extract had an improvement in different seed and seedling growth parameters in presence of pathogen. Priming with Lantana and white cedar leaf extract showed a reduction in some of the parameters that may be due to allelopathic nature of these plants. Seed priming with leaf extract of Wood apple exhibited maximum survival rate (76.50 %) followed by Neem (68.46 %) and White Musale (52.60 %)

Chauhan, J. S.

Kumari, Poonam

Negi, Swati

Negi, Yogesh Kumar

Prabha, Deepti

International Journal of Agriculture System

English

Hasanuddin University Graduate School: Open Journal Systems

International Journal of Agriculture System (IJAS)[      ]46Effect of Seed Priming with Some Plant Leaf Extract on Seedling Growth Characteristics and Root Rot Disease in TomatoDeepti Prabha (Corresponding author)School of Agriculture, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal, India.Tel: +91-01370-267664 Fax: +91-01346-252247 E-mail: deepti_prabha@rediffmail.comSwati NegiSchool of Agriculture, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal, India.Tel: +91-01370-267664 Fax: +91-01346-252247 E-mail: swatinegi664@gmail.com Poonam KumariSchool of Agriculture, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal, India.Tel: +91-01370-267664 Fax: +91-01346-252247 E-mail: poonamrani.rani634@gmail.com Yogesh Kumar NegiVCSG Uttarakhand University of Horticulture & Forestry, Ranichauri, Garhwal, India.Tel: +91-01370-267664 Fax: +91-01346-252247 E-mail: yknegi@rediffmail.comJ. S. ChauhanSchool of Agriculture, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal, India.Tel: +91-01370-267664 Fax: +91-01346-252247 E-mail: js99chauhan@gmail.co(Received: April 5, 2015 Reviewed: July 23, 2015; Accepted: May 2, 2016)Abstract: Tomato is one of the important vegetable crops. The problem of seedling establishment is found in tomato due to several soil borne diseases. One of them is root rot caused by Fusarium oxysproum. There are many chemical methods available to control this disease, but use of chemicals deplete the soil micro-environment and causes soil and water pollution and also do not fit within the framework of ‘Organic farming’. Seed priming with certain phytochemicals may be an economic and ecofriendly alternative to such chemicals. In present study we primed tomato seeds with leaf extract of six different plants (White musale, Periwinkle, Neem, Wood apple, Lantana and White cedar). Different leaf extracts of dose of 2% was taken independently for seed priming. We found that priming with White musale, Periwinkle, Neem and wood apple leaf extract had an improvement in different seed and seedling growth parameters in presence of pathogen. Priming with Lantana and white cedar leaf extract showed a reduction in some of the parameters that may be due to allelopathic nature of these plants. Seed priming with leaf extract of Wood apple exhibited maximum survival rate (76.50 %) followed by Neem (68.46 %) and White Musale (52.60 %).  Keywords: Fusarium oxysporum; plant extracts; seed priming; seedling vigour; tomato1.   IntroductionTomato is an important vegetable crop. Production of tomato is greatly affected by different diseases. One of the many diseas-es is root rot in tomato causes by Fusarium oxysproum. It is a soil born fungus found especially in warm regions. The organism is specific for tomato and is very longlived in soil (Suárez-Estrellaet et al., 2004). Vari-ous methods are tried to control this disease organically. Seed priming with phytochemi-cals can also be a method to increase the seed vigour of seeds and can improve per-formance of seeds in presence of pathogen. Volume 4 Issue 1 June 2016[      ]47The rationale of seed priming is to lessen the time between planting and emer-gence and to protect seeds from biotic and abiotic factors during critical phase of seed-ling establishment and to synchronize emer-gence, which leads to uniform stand as well as improved yield (Krishnaswami and Srim-arthi, 2001). Priming is controlled hydration technique and enhances seed performance by increasing germination rate and unifor-mity resulting in faster and better seedling development in various crops (Powell et al., 2000, Afzal et al., 2008). Leaves of the plant contain alkaloids and phenolic compounds which protect the plants against pathogens and also produce antioxidant activity (Satish et al., 2007). In the present study we use leaf extracts from six different plants for prim-ing and emphasized on the improvement in germination, seedling growth and survival of seedling in presence of Fusarium oxy-sproum. 2.   Materials and Method2.1  Plant Material Present study was carried out using tomato seeds var. Money Maker. The fresh leaves of the White Musale (Chlorophytum borivillianum), Periwinkle (Vinca rosea), Wood apple (Aegle marmelos), Neem (Azadirachta indica), White cedar (Melia azedarach L) and Lantana (Lantana camara) were collected and dried separately under shade.2.2 Preparation of Leaf Extracts and Dose StandardizationLeaf extract was prepared using cold extraction method. The dried leaves were powdered using electric grinder. First we standardize the dose of medicinal plants leaf extract. For this 1%, 2% and 4% solutions from the respective leaf powder were made in single distilled water. These solutions were kept at 300C temperature for 48 hours. After 48 hours the leaf extracts were filtered by two layer of muslin cloth to remove unwanted material and leaf debris. Seeds were soaked independently in different leaf extracts at room temperature for four hours. After soaking seeds were air dried and put on towel paper for germination test. The seeds primed with 2% and 4% solution of leaf extract showed better results than 1%, however difference between priming with 2% and 4% leaf extract were not pronounced therefore we used 2% leaf extract for further experiment. 2.3 Assessment of Various Growth Parame-ters Pot experiment was conducted to assess the effect of seed priming on disease suppres-sion. The soil was inoculated with 500mg/kg inoculums of Fusarium oxysporum. Three controls were taken for the experiment, (1) Positive control where the seeds were treat-ed with fungicide and the soil was inoculated with pathogen, (2) Negative control where the seeds were not given any treatment but the soil was inoculated with pathogen and (3) Normal control where neither the soil was inoculated nor the seeds were treated.2.4  Data AnalysisObservations on germination percent-age, speed of germination, germination val-ue, root length, shoot length, fresh weight, International Journal of Agriculture System (IJAS)[      ]48dry weight, mortality rate were recorded and seedling vigour I and II were calculated. The data was statistically analysed using ANO-VA to calculate the magnitude of F value.3. Results and DiscussionIn the present study seed priming with different plants extract showed significant increase in different parameters over control. Seed priming with Chlorophytum extract was found best among all the treatments for different morphological and physiologi-cal parameters Maximum speed of germi-nation was observed with the seed primed with Chlorophytum with 76.89% increase over control (Figure 1). Improved Germina-tion percentage was recorded in all the treat-ments. Germination percentage ranged from 68 to 90% (Table 1). Neem leaves shows a moderate effect on the germination and seedling growth in comparison to other treat-ments.This increase in speed of germination and germination percentage may be due to the modification of physiological and bio-chemical nature of seed embryo and its asso-ciated structures, i.e. pre –enlargement of the embryo (Austin et al., 1969) and biochemi-cal changes like  enzyme activation, Gibber-ellins like substances (Lee and Kim, 2000, Basra et al., 2005) may release during the II phase of germination which triggers the syn-thesis of hydrolytic enzymes that causes the early availability of high energy compounds and vital biomolecules to the germinating seedling (Renugadevi  and Vijayageetha, 2006).Maximum seedling length, Dry weight, seedling vigour I and seedling vigour II were found for treatment T1 followed by T3 (Table 1). The increase in dry weight was claimed to be due to enhanced lipid utiliza-tion and enzyme activity due to the presence of bioactive substances in the leaf extracts (Rathinavel and Dharmalingam, 1999) and development of seedling to reach autotropic stage and enabling them to produce relative-ly more quantity of dry matter which dis-cerning the cause for the hike in vigour index by hardening treatment. It is generally as-sumed that the active constituents which are contributing to these anti-fungal properties Table 1.  Effect of seed priming on various seedling growth parameters and disease suppression in pot experiment.Treatments Speed of germination (plant /Day) Germination percentage Seedling length (cm) Fresh weight (gm) Dry weight (gm) Seedling vigour I Seedling vigour II Mortality (%) White Musale 8.65 90.83 10.30 0.57 0.06 481.75 5.62 47.33 Periwinkle 7.52 84.17 9.97 0.46 0.06 418.88 4.64 56.33 Wood apple 6.03 88.33 10.26 0.58 0.06 464.61 5.59 23.33 Neem 6.32 88.33 9.96 0.54 0.06 437.56 5.11 32.67 White cedar 4.68 89.17 9.34 0.59 0.05 476.35 4.16 58.00 Lantana 4.80 76.67 10.73 0.61 0.05 439.25 3.58 63.67 Control 5.54 71.67 8.75 0.44 0.04 340.75 2.74 35.55 Positive control 8.33 93.33 10.33 0.54 0.05 497.92 4.98 12.67 Negative control 4.89 68.33 7.16 0.40 0.03 146.65 2.16 70.67 cd at 5% 1.0102 4.74 0.80 0.12 0.01 71.88 1.02 5.46 Volume 4 Issue 1 June 2016[      ]49of the extracts are phyto-chemicals. Physi-ologically active substances might have activated the embryo and other associated structures which resulted in the absorption of more water due to cell wall elasticity and development of stronger and efficient root system and that would have ultimately re-sulted in higher vigour index (Rangaswamy et al., 1993). Many researchers also reported the benefits of seed hardening with different medicinal plants leaf extract to overcome the adverse condition (Renugadevi et al., 2008; Kamaraj and Padmavathi, 2012). Decline in speed of germination ob-served when the seeds were primed with Melia and Lantana (Figure 1).  Ahmed et al. (2007) found in their experiment that differ-ent concentrations of aqueous leaf extracts of lantana caused significant inhibitory ef-fect on germination, root and shoot elonga-tion and development of lateral roots of re-ceptor crops. The inhibitory effect was much pronounced in root and lateral root devel-opment rather than shoot and germination. Same results were reported by Phuwiwat et al. (2012) when studying the allelopathic ef-fect of Melia leaves on the germination and seedling growth of barnyard grass. They found that both, water uptake and α-amylase activity of E. crus-galli were inhibited. It was concluded that leaves of M. azedarach contained water soluble allelochemicals and caused inhibition of both water uptake and α-amylase activity of E. crus-galli during germination process.The maximum decrease in mortality rate was observed in the seeds primed with wood apple (66.99%) followed by neem (53.77%) (Table 1, Figure 2). Chlorophytum leaves are high in saponin, carbohydrate, proteins and various alkaloids (Chakraborty et al., 2014). Leaves of Vinca rosea are also high in alkaloids and phenolic compounds (Tiong et al., 2013). Neem leaves contains flavonoids, steroids, carbohydrates, glyco-sides, antiquinone, terpenoides and alka-loids (Raphael, 2012). Alkaloids, phnenolic and saponins compounds protect the plants against pathogens and also produce antioxi-dant activity. Sharma and Trivedi (2002) re-ported growth inhibition (72.0%) of Fusari-um oxysporum f. sp  cumini with the extract Figure 1:  Increase in the different seedling growth parameters over negative control. WM- White Mu-sale, PW-Periwinkle, WA- Wood apple, Ne- Neem, WC- White cedar and Lt- Lantana. Decrease in speed of germination observed in the seeds primed with white cedar and lantana.Figure 2. Increase in different planting value param-eters over negative control. WM- White Musale,  PW-Periwinkle, WA- Wood apple, Ne- Neem, WC- White cedar and Lt- Lantana. Minimum mortality rate was observed when the seeds were primed with leaf ex-tract of wood apple.International Journal of Agriculture System (IJAS)[      ]50of D. stramonium. Anti-oxidant properties scavenges the free radical activity thereby improves the germination. Saponins are readily soluble in water which may enhance the nutrient absorption (Satish et al., 2007). 4.  Conclusion We can conclude from the above find-ings that seed priming with 2% leaf extract of Chlorophytum, Agel, Azadirachta and Vinca were found suitable to enhance seed-ling vigour and reduce mortality rate in pres-ence of Fusarium oxysporum in tomato. Lan-tana and Melia shows a reduction in some of the physiological characters but even they could improve the seed vigour in tomato. Seed priming with these plant leaf extract is cost effective and easy to apply at farmer’s field and is suitable under ‘Organic farming’ framework. More research is needed to un-derstand the physiological and biochemical changes occur due to seed priming from the leaf extract of medicinal plants. ReferencesAfzal, I., S.M.A. Basra and N. Ahmad. (2011). Hormonal priming induces salt tolerance in wheat through enhanced antioxidant defence system. 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Effect of Seed Priming with Some Plant Leaf Extract on Seedling Growth Characteristics and Root Rot Disease in Tomato

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