The use of lemon essential oil to control green mold (Penicillium digitatum) in Tucumán

Abstract

Citrus Green mold disease caused by Penicillium digitatum Sacc is the most important postharvest disease of lemon in Tucumán. The use of lemon essential oil (LEO) is a promissory alternative to control this mould. The objective of this work was to evaluate LEO effectiveness at two doses to control citrus Green mold in lemon fruit. Mature fruits were inoculated using a punch previously dipped in a suspension of 1x10⁶ spore/ml of a strain isolated from packing house, and incubated in chamber at 22°C. Subsequently the fruits were dipped during 30 seconds with the following treatments: T1 Control water, T2 Lemon essential oil 0.5%, T3 Lemon essential oil 1%. The experimental unit was composed by 10 fruits. A DCA design with tree replicates (30 fruits per treatment) was used. After 10 days stored at 6°C the sporulation grade (SG) was evaluated using a 5 grade scale (0-4) at 10 intervals. Disease Progress Area Curve (DAPAC) was constructed and ANOVA was used to compare mean values with the Fisher test (5%). Both treatments with LEO were different (DAPAC 56.0;p=0.0012) to control, the best treatment was T3 (28.7) presenting no difference with T2 (36.4) Although more studies should be conducted to further characterize LEO in comparison with commercial fungicides, this result constitute a promissory alternative to control citrus green mould caused by P. digitatum.