Tolerance to Fusarium wilt and anthracnose diseases and changes of antioxidative activity in mycorrhizal cyclamen Moslama Aktar Maya a , Yoh-ichi Matsubara b, * a United Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Gifu University, Gifu 501-1193, Japan b Faculty of Applied Biological Sciences, Gifu University, Gifu 501-1193, Japan article info Article history: Received 23 October 2012 Received in revised form 17 January 2013 Accepted 21 January 2013 Keywords: Glomus fasciculatum Fusarium oxysporum Colletotrichum gloeosporioides Superoxide dismutase Cyclamen persicum Biocontrol abstract Mycorrhizal associations imply a remarkable reprogramming of functions in both plant and fungal symbionts. This consequent alteration on plant physiology has a clear impact on the plant responses to biotic stress management. As a consequence, a pot experiment was conducted to study the interactions between the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) Glomus fasciculatum and the two pathogens Fusarium oxysporum and Colletotrichum gloeosporioides and subsequent effect on growth, disease tolerance and the changes in antioxidative ability in cyclamen plants under growth chamber condition were investigated. At plant maturity, inoculation with F. oxysporum and C. gloeosporioides, responsible for Fusarium wilt and anthracnose of cyclamen respectively, significantly reduced shoot and root dry weights, increased both the disease incidence percentage and showed lower antioxidative activity viz. superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), ascorbic acid (AA) and polyphenol contents in plants. In contrast, the growth response and biomass production of cyclamen plants inoculated with AMF was significantly higher than the nonmycorrhizal control plants, both in the presence and absence of the pathogens. Mycorrhization enhanced plants to reduce the Fusarium wilt and anthracnose incidence compared to nonmycorrhizal controls. In every case, without and with pathogen association, plants inoculated with AMF increased the antioxidant (SOD, APX, AA and polyphenol) production compared to control plants. The results demonstrate that AMF have the ability to induce resistance against Fusarium wilt and anthracnose in cyclamen by increasing the antioxidative activity in plants, which promoted plant growth, biomass production and drastically reduced the disease incidence in cyclamen. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Cyclamen is a herbaceous perennial used as a flowering pot plant (Karlsson and Werner, 2001; Elmer and McGovern, 2004). In the genus Cyclamen, Cyclamen persicum Mill is the major species that has been used for commercial cultivation (Ishizaka et al., 2002). It is the most economically important flowering crop in different tem- perate countries throughout the world (Takamura, 2007). Cyclamen has a longer growing season and began to be a popular commercial plant in the nineteenth century. Currently with the increasing incidence of different biotic (pathogen, pests, nematodes etc) and abiotic (heat, salinity, drought etc) stresses, quality flower produc- tion is hampered day by day (Grover et al., 2011; Maya and Matsubara, in press). Among all the biotic stress agents Fusarium oxysporum, responsible for Fusarium wilt in cyclamen, is one of the highly destructive soil-borne pathogen which can economically limit the production of quality cyclamen (Elmer and McGovern, 2004). The disease has been reported in almost all the cyclamen producing regions in the world and the damage caused by this disease has steadily increased with many other production facilities (Elmer and McGovern, 2004). Apart from this, another emerging biotic stress agent for commercial cyclamen production is Colleto- trichum gloeosporioides responsible for anthracnose in cyclamen (Maya et al., in press). Anthracnose symptoms consist of extensive lesions on aerial parts of the plant. Rounded irregular dark brown spots develop on leaves and later the necrotic centres of leaf lesions fill out in many mature leaves which cause great loss in marketable plant production. Recently Colletotrichum fragariae was also repor- ted as anthracnose causing agent of cyclamen in North Carolina (Liu et al., 2011). Adequate control strategies are yet to be identified for Fusarium wilt and anthracnose of cyclamen. There are no commercially resistant cultivars currently available and the fungicides presently used have very poor curative properties against the disease. Only * Corresponding author. Tel./fax: þ81 58 293 2887. E-mail address: ymatsu@gifu-u.ac.jp (Y. Matsubara). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Crop Protection journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cropro 0261-2194/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cropro.2013.01.007 Crop Protection 47 (2013) 41e48