Assessment of media for mass culturing of Lecanicillium lecanii

Abstract

Sustainable agriculture in the 21st century will increasingly rely on alternative for environmentally friendly pest management interventions. The specific micro-organisms are used as biocontrol agents against various agricultural pests worldwide. Metarhizium anisopliae, Beauveria bassiana, Nomuraea rileyi, Lecanicillium lecanii and Hirsutella spp are the most important entomopathogenic-fungal pathogens used in the management of pests in agriculture. Many natural and synthetic substrates viz, sorghum grain, rice grain, farm manure, vegetable waste, vermicompost, sugarcane bagasse, neem seed kernel, sabouraud dextrose broth and potato dextrose broth were used during this study to estimate the sporulation of entomopathogenic fungi at temperatures of 26±2ºC. Both solid and liquid media were tests of the Lecanicillium lecanii for mass multiplication. Among the various highest-evaluated substrates (13.34 spores / ml) was recorded on sabouraud dextrose broth, which was found to be significantly higher than all the substrates tested after potato dextrose broth spore (11.31 spores / ml), and the sugarcane bagasse medium was considered to be the least spore (1.36 spores / ml) of all the substrates tested.