Control of crisphead lettuce damping-off and bottom rot by seed coating with alginate and Pseudomonas aeruginosa LY-11

Seedling damping-off and bottom rot caused by Rhizoctonia solani are yield limiting diseases of crisphead lettuce. To provide biocontrol measure in the management of the diseases, biocontrol strain Pseudomonas aeruginosa LY-11 was isolated from lettuce rhizosphere and introduced into crisphead lettuce rhizosphere by the seed coating delivery method. Alginate was used as a coating material to generate beads containing 10(6)-10(6.5) colony-forming units (CFUs) of viable bacterial cells of LY-11. When seeds germinated from the alginate beads containing the strain LY-11, the bacteria established mostly in plant rhizosphere to maintain at least 10(4) CFU per gram of plant tissues. Crisphead lettuce seedlings germinated from the entrapped seeds were less affected from damping-off and bottom rot with disease control values of 70.4% and 85.4% respectively. Although P aeruginosa LY-11 colonized plant rhizosphere and not phyllosphere, the result indicated that bottom rot caused by the foliar inoculation of R. solani was effectively reduced by the rhizobacteria. All data suggested that immobilized rhizobacterial application in seeds by alginate coating could control damping-off and induce induced systemic resistance of crisphead lettuce to reduce bottom rot.