Back H. L. Xu, R. Wang, M. A. U. Mridha and H. Umemura
International Nature Farming Research Center, Nagano 390-1401, Japan
Full Paper (PDF File: 133KB)
Abstract
An experiment with tomato plants (Lycopersicum esculentum L. cv. Momotaro T96) was conducted to examine the effect of EM Bokashi fertilization on phytophthora (Phytophthora parasitica) resistance of tomato plants in comparison with chemical fertilization. Tomato plants fertilized with EM Bokashi possessed higher resistance against phytophthora infection compared with plants fertilized with chemicals. However, the photosynthetic activity was not low in leaves of chemical fertilized plants before phytophthora infection. The electrophoresis result showed that there was no difference in leaf proteins among fertilization treatments. This suggested that high phytophthora infection was not related to physiological activity shown by photosynthetic activity and genetic characteristics in proteins. Nitrogen compounds, nitrate and amino acids, in leaves were higher in chemical fertilization plot. Moreover, nitrate reductase activity in the leaf and hydrogenase activity in the soil were lower in chemical fertilized treatment. The integrated results suggested that advantage of nitrogen metabolism in EM Bokashi-fertilized tomato plants accounted for the high phytophthora resistance. Therefore, nature farming with EM technology can be expected in disease control in the plant production systems.