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Allelopathic impact of artificially applied coumarin on Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. niveum

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Abstract

Watermelon production is threatened by fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. niveum (FON) in continuous cultivation system. Some elements, mainly allelochemicals, released from living roots or decayed plants might be associated with the disease. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the possible impact of coumarin, one kind of watermelon allelochemical, on FON. Furthermore, possible new mechanisms might be investigated during the ecological interactions of plant-microbe. Results showed that coumarin strongly inhibited growth of FON leading to a decrease in its biomass, dry weight of mycelia of FON in a liquid culture. The dry weight was decreased by 62.9% compared with control. The hyphal growth of FON on plates was stopped at high (>400 mg l−1) concentrations of coumarin. At 320 mg l−1, sporulation and enzyme activities of FON were also severely suppressed by coumarin. The yield of conidia, and the activities of proteinase, cellulase, and amylase were reduced by 98.9%, 79.7%, 29.8% and 15.9% respectively. However, conidial germination and mycotoxin (MT) production of FON were greatly stimulated, being increased by 55.7% and 14.9 fold at 320 mg l−1 respectively. We conclude that coumarin acted as an allelochemical substance to inhibit growth and pathogenic enzyme activities of FON but to stimulate mycotoxin production and conidial germination. It was suggested that coumarin acted as a signal transduction element bridging plant and pathogen in the process of plant-microbe interactions.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by Jiangsu Provincial Nature Science Foundation (BK20004102) and supported by Science and Technology Ministry of China (2007CB109304, 2006BAD10B09, 2006AAD10Z416 and 2006GB23600454). We would like to thank Professor Evan Evans, from the University of Tasmania, Australia, and Dr. Kuldeep Singh, from the Department of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Biotechnology Punjab Agricultural University, India, for their kind correction and suggestions in the preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. College of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China

    Hong-Sheng Wu, Waseem Raza, Dong-Yang Liu, Cheng-Long Wu, Ze-Shen Mao, Yang-Chun Xu & Qi-Rong Shen

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  1. Hong-Sheng Wu
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Correspondence to Qi-Rong Shen.

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Wu, HS., Raza, W., Liu, DY. et al. Allelopathic impact of artificially applied coumarin on Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. niveum . World J Microbiol Biotechnol 24, 1297–1304 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-007-9602-5

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