# To whom all correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: sangeethaau@hotmail.com JOURNAL OF PURE AND APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY, Dec. 2016. Vol. 10(4), p. 2895-2900 Fruit and Vine Rot of Pointed Gourd (Trichosanthes dioica Roxb.) as Influenced by Planting Systems and Weather Parameters in East Coast Region of India G. Sangeetha*, P. Srinivas, H.S. Singh, B. Debasish and L.K. Bharathi Central Horticultural Experiment Station (ICAR-IIHR), Bhubaneswar - 751 019, India. http://dx.doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.10.4.53 (Received: 12 May 2016; accepted: 30 June 2016) Fruit and vine rot of pointed gourd ( Trichosanthes dioica ) caused by Phytophthora melonis Katsura is a potential disease that occurs extensively in major pointed gourd growing regions of the country. In order to record the effect of planting systems on the incidence and severity of this disease, a study was conducted under trellis and soil bed system of planting during 2015. The study revealed that crop grown in soil bed system had exhibited the vine and fruit rot to the tune of 34.8 and 39.0 percent, respectively during peak rainy season. In trellis system during the study period, there was no fruit and vine rot incidence, however, leaf blight severity to the tune of 2.8 percent was observed as against 28.8 percent in soil bed system. Only the leaf blight was confined to lower most leaves in trellis system. Disease severity was more in soil bed system in rainy season as against other season. Nearly, 40% mortality was observed in seedlings prepared from cuttings taken from soil bed system. Hence on based this study, it was concluded that pointed gourd crop grown on trellis can potentially reduce the leaf, vine and fruit rot severity especially when cropping period coincides with rainy season. Keywords: Pointed gourd, Phytophthora melonis, leaf blight, fruit rot, vine rot. Cucurbits constitute about 5.6% of total vegetable production in India. Pointed gourd (Trichosanthes dioica Roxb., Cucurbitaceae) is a tropical perennial cucurbit originated in Bengal- Assam area of the Indian subcontinent (Chowdhury, 1996) and it is commercially cultivated in Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Eastern UP and West Bengal. Some of the popular varieties of pointed gourd in these regions are Swarna Alaukik, Arka Neelachal Kirti, Rajendra Parwal and Swarna Rekha. Traditionally the crop is either grown in soil bed or trained on bower/trellis system. Since this vegetable is grown during hot humid climate, it suffers from as many as eleven diseases in different parts of India. During its main growing season, pointed gourd encounters several fungal diseases like downy mildew (Pseudoperonospora cubensis), fruit and vine rot (Phytophthora melonis (previously referred as P. cinnamomi), stem rot (Sclerotium rolfsii), anthracnose (Colletotrichum capsici), fruit rot (Pythium aphanidermatum), net blight (Rhizoctonia solani) (Saha et al., 2004) and few viral diseases (Jones et al., 2000). Fruit and vine rot of pointed gourd has been reported to cause major loss to the farmers in West Bengal (Khatua and Maiti, 1982) as it appears every year and causes severe damage (Saha et al. 2004). Guharoy et al. (2006) confirmed the pathogen causing fruit and vine rot of pointed gourd as Phytophthora melonis by morphological as well as by molecular tools, based on ITS-RFLP (Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism of Internal Transcribed Spacer region) and by ITS