Israeli scientists find new way to combat prevalent crop disease

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Israeli scientists have discovered a new way to fight charcoal rot, a prevalent crop disease that affects cotton cultivation not only in Israel but around the world, Ynet News reports.

Published in the Plant Science scientific journal Frontiers, the study was led by Dr. Ofir Degani of the Migal Galilee Research Institute and Tel-Hai Academic College and Dr. Onn Rabinovitz from the Migal Galilee Research Institute’s Northern Agriculture R&D in one of the largest field experiments ever conducted in Israel.

The Macrophomina phaseolina fungus, which affects other crops as well as cotton, is spread through soil and attacks over 500 different plant species, Ynet News said. The disease causes leaf and stem dryness, wilting and eventual death.

The new study found that biological pest control, both separately and in combination with low-dosage chemical pest control, is highly effective in staving off charcoal rot throughout an entire 6-month cotton cultivation season, Ynet News reports.

“We discovered that the causative agent of the disease is also present in other crops, including cotton,” Degani said in a statement. “In fact, today we know that both disease-causing agents, the corn pathogen and the cotton pathogen (M. phaseolina), coexist in both crops while establishing complex mutual relationships that sometimes lead to mutual inhibition and under certain conditions exacerbate outbreaks.So, we thought that the impact of biological methods might strengthen and stabilize when combined with low-dosage chemical compounds.”

“And, in the research we published this year, we demonstrated the effectiveness of integrated biological-chemical pest control in corn. The success in establishing an ecological pest control method in corn encouraged us to apply it against the same disease in cotton,” Degani said.

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