Grafting Local Commercial Tomato Cultivars with H-7996 ang Eg-203 to Suppress Bacterial Wilt (Ralstonia solanacearum) in Indonesia

Abstract

Bacterial wilt of Tomato (Ralstonia solanacearum) causes serious of tomato production in Indonesia. Currently, proper cultural practices are the only way performed by farmers to combat the disease. While this practice could not effectively prevent infection of R. solanacearum to the plant, efforts heve been sought to help farmers keep their plants away from bacterial wilt. Grafting of commercial cultivars with available rootstocks is easy to perform and the effectivity of this methodin suppressing tomato bacterial wilt has been reported in many countries but not in Indonesia. The objective of this study was to find out whether grafting susceptible commercial cultivars of tomato with resistant rootstocks could suppress the developmentt of bacterial wilt in Indonesia. The grafting was conducted in Yogyakarta region., Indonesia, in 2011 with H-7996 ang Eg-203 as rootstocks and three commercial cultivars of tomato (‘Permata’, ‘Lentana’, ‘Fortuna’) as scions. The result indicated that the rootstocks could afford the existence of population of pathogen in the stem tissue, exhibit lower disease index compared with mock grafted and non-grafted plants. The pathogen could be detected in the stem tissue above soil surface at 21 and 28 days after inoculation in plants grafted with H-7996 , but it was detected in non-gafted and mock grafted plants just in 7 days after inoculation. At 35 days after inoculation the pathogen population in the stem tissue (2 cm above ground0 varied from 103 cfu/5 mm tissue. The grafted plants exhibited lower disease index, better growth and yield compared with those of mock grafted and non-grafted plants. The result suggests that grafting commercial cultivar tomatoes with either H-7996 or Eg-203 could suupress bacterial growth, bacterial wilt incidence, and enhance fruit production.