Artichoke can be affected by many diseases that reduce quality and yield especially powdery mildew caused by Leveillula taurica. In recent years, there has been an increased interest to use essential oil combinations to improve their natural antimicrobial and antifungal activities. The present work was conducted to study the efficacy of the controlling artichoke powdery mildew with some compounds eco-friendly environment because of their efficacy as plant resistance inducers and their effects on improving the growth, productivity and quality of artichoke plants. Results indicated that percentage of disease incidence and disease severity of powdery mildew was significantly decreased by spraying some essential oils: garlic, camphor, black seed and clove each at 0.5% three times with 15 days interval in combination with DL- β-amino butyric acid (BABA). A reduction of the disease incidence by DL- β- aminobutyric acid (BABA) was occurred in addition to an increase of vegetative characters when used with essential oils. Spraying artichoke plants with essential oils exhibited a significant increase in the activity of peroxidase, polyphenoloxidase and chitinase in artichoke leaves infected by Leveillula taurica compared with a control. Thus, spraying any of the tested oils alone does not have a significant effect on growth, yield and quality unless it is associated with the addition of BABA compared with the fungicide only one 40%EC. Also, the spraying of garlic oil + BABA has achieved the highest rates of increase in the early and total yield. |
