Figure 5.

Suppression of watermelon Fusarium wilt by the antagonistic bacterial strains. (A) Disease phenotype of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. nevium (Fon)-inoculated watermelon plants pretreated with the antagonistic bacterial strains, Topsin-M, or Luria-Bertani medium (CK) at 15 d post-inoculation. (B) Disease severity index of Fon-inoculated watermelon plants with or without the antagonistic bacterial strains. (C) Biocontrol efficacies of the antagonistic bacterial strains against Fusarium wilt in watermelon. Watermelon plants were treated by root drenching with 15 mL suspension of each of the antagonistic bacterial strains, Topsin-M (a positive control), or Luria-Bertani medium (CK), followed by Fon inoculation at 5 d after applying treatments. The results in (A) are from an experiment that was performed independently three times with similar results. The data presented in (B,C) are the means ± standard deviation from three independent experiments. Different lowercase letters indicate significant differences at the p-value < 0.05 level according to the one-way analysis of variance test.