Foliar Blight Disease Occurrence on Zea maize L. Cropin Tehsil Samahni Area of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan

Abstract Zea maize L (corn) is prevalent and agronomic crop being ubiquitously cultivated in many areas of  Tehsil Samahni of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan), This is serving as staple food for mountainous communities of the area. The corn crop is being damaged due to many biotic and abiotic parameters. Fungal attack culminating into different severe diseases is very frequent. In this research prevalence and occurrence of foliar mycoflora was investigated and its impact on plant growth (morphology) and yield (grains) was studied. Sporadic sampling was conducted using Randomized complete block design (RCBD) technique from 15 different sites (fields of local farmers). The analysis depicted that leaf was prominent part of plant, being machinery of photosynthesis which was infected by different fugal biodiversity causing northern corn leaf blight (NCLB) and southern corn leaf blight (SCLB) mostly. The field data analysis by sophisticated softwares depicted that SCLB was the most prevalent disease in the area with 50% occurrence, followed by NCLB with 35.71 %. The results showed that both mycofloral diseases were more common on shady and moist places of Chowki, Bindi and Dab (near streams and mountains’ shadow) experimental sites. The explored findings on incidence were behaving variation of occurrence with altitude, temperature, soil type and moisture. The fresh and dry biomass was found in more in high and wet climate zones of study than dry belts. The quantity and quality of grain was also hampered due to common occurrence of different fungal diseases on leaf which is major synthetic machinery.

Keywords Southern corn leaf blight; Corn Leaf; Mycoflora; Azad Kashmir; Samahni.

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Updated: January 20, 2024 — 9:18 am