Impact of Soil Solarization on Some Solanaceous Vegetables Nursery in Plateau Region of Jharkhand, India

Study revealed that soil solarization in integration with FYM amendment @ 0.2kg/m² and seed treatment with Trichoderma harzianum @ 5.0 g/kg seed potentially reduced damping-off of tomato, chillies and brinjal seedlings. It is clear from the experiment that solarization for 6–8 weeks could effectively reduce the population of deleterious microflora inhabiting soil. The population of Fusarium, Pythium, Aspergillus sp. alongwith actinomycetes and bacteria increased progressively with decrease in duration of solarization period. Whereas, the population of Trichoderma spp. showed a slight reduction after 2 weeks of solarization but after 4 weeks of solarization their population increased with the increase in duration of solarization period. After 8 weeks of solarization, the population of Trichoderma spp. was maximum at 5 cm depth (4.33 x 10⁴/g soil) whereas in non solarised soil it was only 2.33 x 10⁴/g soil. And, the efficacy of solarization enhanced when it was employed in integration with farmyard manure as soil amendment and T. harzianum as seed treatment. Soil solarization in integration with FYM amendment and seed treatment with T. harzianum potentially reduced the pre-and post-emergence damping-off incidence to 15.67 and 2.00 per cent, respectively in tomato. In chilli, 11.00 and 2.33 per cent incidence of pre-and post-emergence damping-off was recorded. Similarly, in brinjal, 17.33 and 3.33 per cent incidence of pre-and post-emergence damping-off was recorded, respectively.