Assessment and Evaluation of Enset Landraces to Bacterial Wilt (Xanthamonas campestris pv. musacearum) disease of enset at Gedio Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Enset is an important food crop produced in Ethiopia with great role in food security especially for southern and south western parts of the country. However its production has been threatened by a devastating bacterial disease caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum. Field surveys in in Gedio Zone, and pot experiment at Dilla University were conducted in 2018/2019 cropping season. A total of 90 enset farms were observed at about 5km apart. Observation for disease symptom in farms was performed with a simple random sampling technique in a diagonal fashion in a sampling area of (10m*10m). Numbers of infected and disease free enset plants in each sample were recorded. The result showed that 65 % of enset farms were infected with the disease with mean incidence of 34.96%. Twenty Enset landraces collected from Gedeo zone were evaluated their reaction to Enset bacterial wilt through artificial inoculation. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Design with twenty treatments in three replications.  Except Maziya, all enset landraces showed wilt symptom but at varying levels of the disease incidence during the first 35 days after inoculation. Maziya was resistant, enset landraces; Ganticho, Torame, Filila, Ado, Werabesa, Mindame, and Gakira were moderately resistance. Therefore, the resistant and tolerant Landraces should be multiplied, demonstrated and incorporated in the farming practice. But these should be further evaluated for a large number of Xcm isolates under both pot experiment and on the field condition.