Soil amendment and seed treatments with compost tea as alternative fungicide for controlling root rot disease of bean plants

Clarified compost tea of three different plant sources of slurries of spent mushroom substrate (sms),path and/or rice straw,were used as inhibitors for different foliar and soil borne pathogens. fusarium solani mart sacc.,macrophomina phaseolina tassi and rhizoctonia solani kuhn proved to be the most dominant isolated fungi from roots of bean plants infected with root rot disease in noubaria district (el-behera governorate,egypt). meanwhile,fusarium oxysporium,phythium spp. and sclerotium rolfsii were frequently recorded. pathogenicity test proved that the most effective fungi on beans were f. solani and r. solani,followed by m. phaseolina. in greenhouse trails,soil amendment with compost tea (1) (sms) showed high effect in reducing root rot incidence caused by f. solani,r. solani and m. phaseolinae at pre-emergence damping-off stage. the same treatment reduced root rot disease after 45 days caused by the previous three pathogens. seed treatment with compost tea reduced root rot diseases at the pre- and post emergence stages. meanwhile,coating seeds with compost tea had a good effect in reducing root rot incidence under field conditions. after 40 and 60 days of sowing,amended soil increased fresh pods yield in the two successive seasons 2009 and 2010. it possessed a strong antifungal active effct against soil borne pathogens. it is worth to recommend the practical use of compost tea or seed treatments to control soil borne plant pathogens as a substitute of chemical fungicides without any risk to human,animal and environment.