Study on Fusarium oxysporum as a biocontrol agent on Papaver somniferum

Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) is one of the most important medicinal plants which can be cultured for use of the alkaloid morphine too. Plant poppy have been also associated with the most pests and diseases all over the world. One of the major disease is related to Fusarium oxyspoprumt which can also control plant cultivation in biggest producer of opium. However¸ the objectives of this study were to evaluate the effect of Fusarium oxysporum isolates against opium poppy and verify their potential as biocontrol agent. For this, a 2-year experiment was carried out under glasshouse (2 trials) and field conditions (2 trials). From infected poppy plants, a total of 16 pathogenic fungal strains were identified as F. oxysporum and used for the experiments. The isolates Ghr18, Ghr5-2, Mr28 and Ghr5-4 caused the highest wilting symptoms on sample plants (P< 0.001). In addition, no significant differences were observed between field and glasshouse conditions (P > 0.5). Moreover, the results showed a clear host specificity of the selected pathogenic isolates. These results suggest that Fusarium isolates have the potential to be used as biological control agents against poppy plants where legal policy surrounding the growing of this plant.