Figure 6.

Protection efficacy against F. oxysporum infection achieved by treatment with the antifungal DD6 and the non-antifungal EC9 bacterial strains, respectively, in pilot trials under commercial conditions. (a) Disease level was assessed at 4 weeks after pathogen inoculation by determining the percentage of asymptomatic plants versus the percentage of plants showing yellow and abscised leaves. The numbers in the bar indicate percentage of plants (n = 96). (b) Determination of the length of the first two internodes to measure growth retardation (n = 96). (c) Relative fungal biomass in blocks of 24 plant stems pooled together (n = 3). C− denotes untreated, uninoculated control plants, and C+ denotes untreated, inoculated control plants. The error bars represent standard error of the mean. Treatment means marked with different letters are significantly different at p ≤ 0.05.