USE OF ENDOPHYTIC BACTERIA IN CONTROLLING SUGARCANE SMUT DISEASE

Abstract

Sugarcane is considered one of the most important crops grown for sugar production all over the world. In Egypt, Sugarcane crop has been cultivated as a commercial sugar crop, its cultivation areas are located in Upper Egypt. Sugarcane is known to be attacked by numerous diseases such as red rot and smut. These destructive diseases limiting the production of sugarcane in many areas of the world. In Egypt, the economic Sugarcane smut is the main disease. This study carried out to isolate and identify sugarcane the endophytic bacteria collected from stalks from different regions in Upper Egypt to examine its antimicrobial activity against the pathogenic fungus Sporisorium scitamineumin the causal organism of sugarcane smut disease in vivo and in vitro, also to study the ability of the collected endophytic bacteria on producing pathogenesis related proteins and growth promoting substances. The most important results obtained were as follows: 1. Twenty four isolates of Sporisorium scitamineumin were collected during growing seasons 2013-2016. Fungal isolates were identified using cultural and morphological characteristics and confirmed by PCR reaction using specific primers of Sporisorium scitaminenum. 2. One hundred sixty samples sugarcane stalks samples were collected from sugarcane production fields from the main growing areas in Egypt. A total of 240 bacterial isolates were isolated from the samples. The highest number of bacterial isolates were recorded in Luxor (LU) samples. While, the lowest number of bacterial isolates were recorded in Sohag (SO) followed by Qeina (Q), El- Giza (GZ) and Benisuef (BAN). 3. Among the collected endophytic bacteria isolates sixty two bacterial isolates showed a positive antagonistic activity against S. scitamineum in vitro.