Plant disease management approaches for organic crop production in Indian scenario: A critical review

In recent times, the agricultural scenario has been undergoing a drastic change in converting from inorganic to an organic system. It has been gaining fabulous popularity amongst the farmers, consumers as well as researchers. The reason being the harmful effects of inorganic agrochemicals and fertilizers that had drawn the attention of people to a greater extent. The excess and non-judicious usage of inorganic inputs had deteriorated the health of soil, environment, human being, besides creating an ecological imbalance. To tackle such concerns for sustainable and healthy food production, adoption, and promotion of organic agriculture could be an appropriate approach which is the need of the hour. However, numerous biotic and abiotic factors limit the success of crop production in such agricultural systems. Among such biotic factors, plant diseases which are caused by several phytopathogenic fungi, bacteria, viruses, and nematodes play a crucial role. Plant diseases could be managed through agronomic practices such as crop rotation, flooding, deep ploughing, soil solarization, manipulating planting time, irrigation, fertilization, composting, weeding, sanitation, tillage, etc. and use of biological control agents (BCAs) like Trichoderma, Ampelomyces, Pseudomonas and Bacillus, indigenous formulations / indigenous technology knowledge (ITKs), etc. This review article is focused on plant disease management approaches concerning organic cultivation of cereals, vegetables, and fruit crops.

کلیدواژه ها:

Organic agriculture ، Diseases ، biological control agents ، indigenous formulation ، Cereals ، Vegetables ، fruits