Treatment with Thiabendazole can enhance germination, vigor and reduce incidence of fungi in zucchini seeds

Abstract

Some chemical treatments might be required to eradicate or reduce the presence of fungi in seeds. However, these treatments can impair seed quality depending on the dose used. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the control of fungi and physiological quality of 'Aline' hybrid zucchini seeds treated with the fungicide Thiabendazole. Fifteen treatments, were set up as a 3x5 factorial system (3 seed lots x 5 Thiabendazole doses: 0%, 0.12%, 0.2%, 0.3% and 0.4% active ingredient), were evaluated, in a completely randomized experiment design, with four replications. The commercial product used was Tecto® SC (485 g L-1 of Thiabendazole). Seed germination, germination first count (GFC) and incidence of fungi in seeds were assessed. The averages were compared with Tukey test at 5% probability. Some fungi species (Alternaria sp., Aspergillus spp., Cladosporium sp., Colletotrichum sp., Curvularia spp., Penicillium spp. and Phoma sp.) were detected in the pathology analysis and a general decrease of fungi incidence was observed with an increase in the Thiabendazole dose. Regardless of the dose, Thiabendazole fungicide did not affect total germination (99.6% on average) or vigor (99.3% on average in GFC). So, it can be recommended that treatment of zucchini seeds with Thiabendazole with dose 0.3% or 0.4% can control the observed fungi.