Effect of Provenance of Seed Mycoflora in Southern Transition Zone of Karnataka, India

The agro climatic components such as photoperiod, relative humidity, rainfall and temperature vary with locality and season of seed production, which ultimately determines the seed quality. It is well established that they were known to influence crop growth, maturity and occurrence of seed borne pathogens. Seeds were collected from various places of Southern Transition Zone and used for the study by employing blotter paper method. Twelve fields and five storage fungi were found associated with 41 varieties sampled, out of these 36 varieties were infected. The fungi Sarocladium oryzae was totally absent and the varieties IET-7191, Hemavathi and BPT-5204 were infected with more number of field as well as storage fungi. The occurrence of total number of individual fungi, per cent seed infection by individual fungi varied widely and the prevalence of total individual fungi varied from variety to variety and location to location indicating the effect of provenance.