Growth promoting fungi increase the quality of Coffea canephora seedlings Pierre ex a. Froehner

Abstract

Growth promoting fungi have shown an important role in the development of agricultural crops. Among these fungi, the genus Trichoderma stands out, and the entomopathogenic fungi of the genus Beauveria and Metarhizium have been gaining greater importance. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the vegetative growth of conilon coffee seedlings inoculated with growth promoting fungi. For the production of seedlings, cuttings of clone A1 of conilon coffee were used, in standard substrate. The growth promoting fungi Trichoderma harzianum, Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae were used at a concentration of 1 x 107 conidia.mL-1, inoculated via soil and leaf. Vegetative growth evaluations were performed at 180 days after cutting. The treatments corresponded to a 4 x 2 factorial arrangement, in a randomized block design, with three replications, totaling 24 plots. The data were submitted to analysis of variance and the means compared by the Scott-Knott grouping method (p ≤ 0.05). The treatments did not promote gains in plant height, stem diameter, root length, root fresh mass, leaf area, shoot/root fresh and dry mass of conilon coffee seedlings. Growth promoting fungi T. harzianum and B. bassiana promoted a greater number of leaf pairs, greater fresh mass of aerial part and greater dry mass of aerial part. Additionally, T. harzianum promoted greater root dry mass in conilon coffee seedlings. Only for the parameter number of leaf pairs, the inoculation via soil was greater than via leaf, while for the other parameters there was no difference regarding the inoculation method.