Paper Details

Name: Naina Srivastava
Country: India

Year: 2022
Volume: Volume-9, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 114-122

ABSTRACT
Sustainable cultivation of medicinal plants demands disease management systems that protect yield and biochemical quality without relying excessively on synthetic chemical inputs. Integrated disease management (IDM) brings together biological control, cultural practices, resistant germplasm selection, and judicious chemical use into a coherent system tailored to specific crop-pathogen interactions. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of six IDM component strategies, individually and in combination, across five commercially important medicinal plant species over two growing seasons in a field trial setting. Components evaluated include Trichoderma-based biocontrol, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), neem-based botanicals, soil solarisation, intercropping with allelopathic species, and reduced-dose copper fungicide. Disease severity, plant stand, dry root yield, and key secondary metabolite concentrations were measured as outcomes. Results showed that no single strategy provided adequate control across all target diseases, but three-way combinations consistently outperformed individual treatments. The combination of Trichoderma with PGPR and solarisation reduced disease severity by an average of 61% and improved secondary metabolite concentration by 18% relative to untreated controls. Combinations that included reduced-dose copper performed comparably but at lower cost, suggesting a pragmatic entry point for smallholder farmers. Findings support the case for locally tailored IDM packages over generic recommendations and highlight the importance of measuring phytochemical outcomes alongside agronomic ones.

Keywords
Integrated disease management, biocontrol, Trichoderma, PGPR, medicinal plants, sustainable cultivation