Recent Developments in Bacterial blight of Pomegranate and its Management

Abstract

Pomegranate ( Punica granatum L.) is an important ancient fruit known for its high nutritive and medicinal values. It is a native of Iran and adjoining areas and is mainly cultivated in subtropical and tropical regions of the world comprising countries like India, Iran, the USA, Afghanistan,Turkey, Spain, Tunisia, and Israel. In India, which is one of the largest pomegranate-producingcountries of the world, the fruit is commercially cultivated mainly in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan. Besides, small-scale cultivation of pomegranate is also observed in the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.Bacterial blight, in recent years, has become the most important disease of pomegranate due to its epidemic occurrence in all the major pomegranate- growing states of Maharashtra,Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh infl icting enormous losses on growers. Although bacterial blight has been known to be present in India since 1952 (Hingorani and Mehta 1952 ), the disease was of minor importance until 1998. Apart from its fi rst report from Delhi in 1952, bacterial blight has been reported by various workers from different parts of the country, namely, Bangalore in Karnataka (Hingorani and Singh 1959 ; Chand and Kishun 1991 ), Tamil Nadu (Rangaswami 1962 ), Himachal Pradesh (Sohi et al . 1964 ),Haryana (Kanwar 1976 ), Maharashtra Kamble 1990 , and Punjab (Rani and Verma 2001 ).Recent epidemics of bacterial blight have been reported from Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh (Dhandar et al. 2004 ; Sharma et al. 2008 ; Benagi and RaviKumar 2009) .Pomegranate bacterial blight is not reported from any country outside India.