Figure 3.

Assessment of the disease protection efficacy of bacterial strains DD6 and EC9 in Kalanchoe plants inoculated with F. oxysporum. (a) Comparison of a healthy plant (left) with two infected plants (right) 6 weeks after the inoculation showing typical symptoms of wilting, growth retardation and leaf abscission. Disease symptom reduction in plants treated with strain DD6 (b) and EC9 (c) in comparison to the controls (untreated, inoculated plants). The reduction in disease symptoms was measured indirectly as increase in fresh weight (d) and decrease in leaf abscission (e) in plants treated with strains DD6 and EC9 (n = 12). (f) Quantification of F. oxysporum DNA in Kalanchoe stems as determined by the ratio of fungal DNA to plant DNA. For each treatment, four groups of three plants pooled together were used for DNA extraction and PCR quantification (n = 4). The error bars represent standard error of the mean. Treatment means marked with different letters are significantly different at p ≤ 0.05.