Effect of environmental factors on an emerging disease: Black banded disease of mango

Abstract

Black banded disease is an emerging disease of mango occurs with cool and moist weather conditions during the growing season. Since, environmental factors play crucial role on growth, dissemination and infection of pathogen as well as influence the expression of susceptibility/resistance of the host plant after infection. Therefore, an experiment was carried out during 2019-2020, at, UAS, Dharwad to study the effect of weather factors on disease development. Present study revealed that that length of black band progressively increased during July to October, 2019 and during remaining period of the year no growth or negligible increase in black band was noticed. Among the various weather parameters studied, high rainfall, number of rainy days, and minimum temperature seem to have pronounced effect on the spread of black banded disease. More number of rainy days with high rainfall of 150-300 mm, more than 80 per cent relative humidity and temperature of 27 to 30˚C were observed to be favourable for the development and spread of black band. It was confirmed from this study that development and spread of black banded disease occurred mainly during part of monsoon season from July to October.