Published Paper Details:

Interaction of plants with environmental factors and microbial world is a dynamic process. As part of this ever-changing process new disease emerges or minor disease may become major with time. This paper majorly reports a very brief account of well-studied old diseases of sorghum and emphasizes on emerging diseases with particular reference to India. Description of sorghum diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, and their transmission through seed implies quarantine significance. The fungus pathogen Macrophomina phaseolina was successfully isolated from the basal portion of the charcoal rot of infected Sorghum stem collected from the fields of National Research Centre for Sorghum (NRCS) Rajendranagar, Hyderabad. In this present study small bits of sclerotia bearing strands were surface sterilized by immersing in 0.1 percent mercury chloride for two minutes. The surface sterilized strands washed in three changes of sterile distilled water. They were planted on PDA under aseptic conditions and incubated at 250C in SEW, BOD incubator. After 4days of incubation the fungus was transferred on a fresh PDA plate and was purified through single sclerotia isolation purified culture of M. phaseolina was maintained on PDA slants at room temperature (26-280C).