Beyond nourishment: The impact of micronutrients on Magnaporthe grisea sporulation infecting finger millet

Abstract

Finger millet blast, caused by Magnaporthe grisea is a devastating and recurrent issue across all finger millet cultivation areas globally. The main challenge linked to cultivating the M. grisea culture involve achieving sporulation on culture plates. Therefore, to investigate the impact of amino acids (L-tyrosine, arginine and phenylalanine) and vitamins (riboflavin and ascorbic acid) in promoting sporulation, experiment was conducted at three concentrations (0.01g /l, 0.02 g/l and 0.03 g/l) using three different cultural media, rice straw extract agar (RSEA), oat meat agar (OMA) and a combination of RSEA and OMA. Among all the amendments, L-tyrosine at the concentration of 0.03 g/l recorded highest mean radial growth of 9.00 cm, which was highest among all the treatments. Whereas, RSEA+OMA amended with phenyl alanine at 0.03 g/l produced highest number of conidia (33.33 conidia/40x microscopic view).