Understanding the influence of applying plant extracts and microorganism culture filtrates against barley leaf rust disease

Abstract

Rust fungi are devastating plant pathogens, and several Puccinia species have exerting substantial financial impacts on global barley cultivation. Fungicides are used on a large scale as an effective method for combating phytopathogenic fungi. The negative environmental impacts of fungicides are steadily escalating on a daily basis. Consequently, researchers are currently exploring alternative approaches to mitigate the use of fungicides, such as the utilization of plant extracts. This method has proven effective due to its incorporation of natural antifungal substances. Among the nine natural elicitors that were tested, the application of plant extracts on barley seedlings resulted in an increase in the incubation and latent periods of Puccinia hordei. These periods are integral components of partial and induced resistance, effectively mitigating the incidence of barley leaf rust disease by over 70% on mature plants. Similarly, the biochemical analyses demonstrated a notable augmentation in all the tested treatments’ overall phenolics and oxidative enzyme activities (peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase). Random amplified polymorphic DNA (SCoT) test serves as a viable approach for assessing the impact of plant extracts and microorganisms on barley plants. The results obtained from this study indicate that the detection of DNA polymorphism through SCoT analysis holds a significant potential powerful tool to evaluate genetic changes compared with untreated plants although some of them tested displayed high similarities at the morphological reaction.