Eco friendly and Economic Farm Level Production Method for Metarhizium anisopliae

Entomo pathogenic fungi play a crucial role in any IPM programme. Among these fungi, the green muscardine fungus Metarhizium anisopliae (Metschnikoff) Sorokin is an important one due to its effectiveness against a wide range of insect pests including soil inhabiting ones and grubs of rhinoceros beetle. Adoption of Metarhizium for managing rhinoceros beetle grubs as manure pit application is not gaining popularity due to the non availability of formulation. On farm production method involving solid state fermentation system has the lacuna of availing pure culture, maintaining the culture and its high cost. Moreover, there are chances of occurrences of health problems by inhalation of conidia produced as dry powder form in the on farm production methods practiced nowadays. In this backdrop, present study has been conducted, wherein 2 economic media viz. coconut water and rice gruel water with and without addition of sugar and two types of inoculation methods i.e. inoculating with pure culture of fungus and with talc based formulation were evaluated. The results revealed that coconut water inoculated with talc based formulation was superior in supporting growth of the fungus and produced more number of colony forming units, which was at par with that of potato dextrose broth inoculated with pure culture of fungus. Hence, the farmers can exploit the possibility of utilizing talc based formulation of Metarhizium purchased from a reputed and reliable source for on farm multiplication using coconut water as it is easily available and economical.