Essential oils of medicinal plants in the control of Aspergillus sp. and as quality vegetable seeds inoculated and treated

Abstract

The demand for food is growing along with the increasing world population, which encourages the use of conventional pesticides. To reduce the negative effects, organic agriculture is an alternative that prioritizes the use of natural products. However, still there are few products for organic agriculture, and from the increased pressure of diseases and pests on modern agriculture, it is essential to study new options to control these problems. The genus Aspergillus is the group most contamination in stored seeds. The objective is to evaluate the effect of the essential oils of Origanum vulgare, Eugenia caryophyllus and Melaleuca alternifolia on coriander, lettuce and arugula seeds inoculated with the fungus Aspergillus sp. The experiment will be in factorial 3 x 5 x 4 completely randomized design and four replicates, with three essential oils: oregano (Origanum vulgare); Clove (Eugenia caryophyllus); Tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia), the second factor will be five concentrations of each essential oil: 0; 0.01; 0.05; 0.1; and 1%, and the third factor will correspond to the treatment time of the seeds: 2; 5; 10 and 15 minutes. These treatments will be tested on three plant species of coriander, lettuce and arugula seeds. The characteristics to be evaluated will be: germination, first germination count, radicle length, dry seedling mass, emergency speed index, emergency test and sanity. Each plant species will be submitted to analysis of variance and will be applied to regression analysis at 5% probability for factors concentrations and treatment times, for the factor types of essential oils will be applied Tukey test at 5% probability. (AU)