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GINGER Bacterial Wilt

Name of Crop	GINGER
Scientific Name	Zingiber officinale Rosc
Local Name	Adhuwa
Family	Zingiberaceae
Distribution state/World wide	Asia and South East Asia
Common Name of Disease	BACTERIAL WILT
Local Name of Disease	Ohelini bimar or’Prem rog’
Causal Organism	Ralstonia solanacearum
Distribution of Disease in Sikkim	Disease incidence in maximum in high rainfall areas of North, East, and some areas of West Sikkim and less in South Sikkim
Disease Incidence	Moderate to high
Site of Infection	The bacteria find their way to the roots of ginger by swimming in soil water. They enter the roots through the wound caused by nematode or mau extraction. Once inside the roots, they enter the water conducting tissues and via these they travel to the rhizome and the stem
Dissemination of the Disease	It is a seed-borne and soil borne disease
Symptoms	Symptom is noticed during July-August in Sikkim. In severe cases result in total loss of crop. The disease is characterized by drooping and wilting of leaves even in early morning. The base of the pseudostem turns grey to dark and soft. The cut ends of the pseudostem or rhizomes when pressed exude a milky substance. The leaf margin of the affected plants exhibits yellow bronze coloured symptom and they curl backward. Ooze test positive confirms that it is bacterial wilt
Favourable enviromental condition for disease	Water stagnation in the field during rainy season. Hot and humid weather condition favours the disease incidence. Injury caused to the rhizome during mau extraction makes the plant susceptible to the disease
Mode of Transmission	Disease is transmitted to a healthy plot through infected planting material, mechanical transmission through human activities. Drainage / run off water flowing across the diseased plot carrying fungal spores to a non-contaminated plot at the lower elevation
Plant Protection Measures	Seed should be selected from a diseased free source. Fresh land free from disease inoculums should be selected based on previous history. Crop rotation of 4-5 years should be followed to avoid disease incidence. Crop rotation should not be done with solanacous crop like tomato, potato, chilly, brinjal etc. Rather growing Cruciferous crop like mustard, radish would suppress the pathogen. Planting should be done on raised bed with proper drainage. Thick mulching should be provided to check weed growth and to conserve moisture. FYM should be well decomposed to avoid white grub infestation. Planting of ginger should be done on sloppy land to avoid water stagnation. Seed treatment with Trichoderma spp.+Pseudomonas florescens before sowing can control disease
Brief History of Disease	Pseudomonas solanacearum (Smith) (which is now renamed as Ralstonia solanacearum) Smith 1914 is a soil borne pathogen which typically invade a host via root injuries or at the point of emergence of the root hairs and lateral roots. Some evidence has been presented of the organism’s ability to enter leaves of certain host via stomata. Bryan (1915) infected nasturtium leaves with a suspension of R. solanacearum and recently we showed that naturally occurring leaf spots of capsicum was caused by R. solanacearum (Hayward & Moffett 1978). In India, rotation with finger millet or maize was effective in reducing wilt of eggplant and tomato (Shoe et al 1981). In china, 3 years of rice cultivation reduced bacterial wilt incidence of ground nut from 83% to1.5% (Wang et al 1983)