Eco-friendly management of wheat stripe rust through application of Bacillus subtilis in combination with plant defense activators

Stripe rust (SR) caused byPuccinia striiformisWestend. f. sp.triticiErikss (Pst) is one of the most important and destructive disease of wheat worldwide. In Pakistan, stipe rust appeared as epidemic and is causing huge losses to wheat production. However, wheat breeding programs are not sufficiently advanced to cope with the recently emergedPuccinia striiformisstrains. Under this scenario, current research was carried out for safe, effective and sustainable management of stripe rust of wheat. Seven wheat varieties include Sehar-06, Galaxy-13, Abdul Sattar-02, Faisalabad-08, Johar-16, TD-1 and Ujala-16 were planted at research farm of Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan during November 2019–20 and 2020–21 to determine their response toward Puccinia striiformis. The fungicide Tilt®, propiconazole, (T2) at the rate of 3 mL per 1500 mL water was used while the Bacillus subtilis (T1) was added at rate of 0.25 mL/1500 mL water with 15 g of dextrose, 0.25 g of chitosan and 0.25 g of salicylic acid in 1500 mL water to make a fine suspension. Our results showed that T1 reduced the disease effectively up to (8.18%) followed by T2 (10.7%) as compared to T0 (23.8%). The correlation between minimum air temperature, relative humidity and disease severity was highly significant while with maximum air temperature it was negatively non-significant. Also, wind speed, solar radiation and rainfall showed non-significant correlation with disease severity. After treatment, application of T1 and T2, minimum air temperature expressed a significant correlation with disease severity on varieties Sehar-2006, Galaxy-13 and Abdul Sattar-02 while non-significant correlation with disease severity on varieties Faisalabad-08, Johar-16, TD-1 and Ujala-16. Similarly, maximum air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation showed non-significant correlation with disease severity while rain fall was negatively non-significant. The current study showed that Bacillus subtilis is an ecofriendly management of stripe rust and its combination with plant defense activators enhance the efficacy and suppress disease. This management strategy is an innovative, and the results obtained will be helpful for better, ecofriendly and effective management of disease.