Fungi Associated with Postharvest Spoilage of Irish Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) and Their Pathogenicity in Dutse, Northwestern Nigeria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67601/njbls.v3i2b.91Keywords:
Rhizopus stolonifer, Storage rot, Tuber decay, Mycobiota, Jigawa StateAbstract
Postharvest fungal spoilage reduces the quality and marketability of potato tubers. This study investigated fungi associated with spoiled Irish potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) tubers obtained from markets in Dutse, Jigawa State, Nigeria, and assessed the pathogenicity of the recovered isolates on healthy tubers. Ten spoiled tubers were collected from five sellers/shops at Dutse Ultra-Modern Market and Investment (Yan Tifa) Market, each seller/shop being treated as one sampling unit (sample groups A–E). Rotten tissues were processed by serial dilution (10⁻¹ and 10⁻²) and cultured on Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA), followed by purification and morphology-based identification using cultural characteristics and lactophenol cotton blue microscopy. Five fungal taxa were morphologically identified: Aspergillus niger, Rhizopus stolonifer, Fusarium oxysporum, Aspergillus flavus and Mucor racemosus. Thirty-one isolates were recovered, and the percentages reported below are relative frequencies among these 31 isolates rather than the proportion of tubers infected. R. stolonifer was the most frequent (10; 32.3%), followed by A. niger (7; 22.6%), F. oxysporum (6; 19.4%), A. flavus (4; 12.9%) and M. racemosus (4; 12.9%). In the pathogenicity assay, a single representative isolate of each taxon was inoculated into five healthy tubers, and all five taxa produced visible rot. The mean rot diameters recorded after 10 days were 32 mm for R. stolonifer, 25 mm for A. niger, 20 mm for A. flavus, 16 mm for F. oxysporum and 14 mm for M. racemosus. The findings indicate that several fungi were associated with potato spoilage in the sampled Dutse markets and that each of the five taxa was able to initiate rot in healthy tubers under the assay conditions. Because measures of variation and inferential statistics were not available, the differences in mean rot diameter are reported descriptively and not as an established ranking of virulence. Improved handling, protection from tuber injury, segregation of decayed tubers and suitable storage conditions are recommended. Molecular identification and fully replicated, statistically analysed pathogenicity experiments would strengthen future studies.
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