Description:

• This disease can affect cotton crops at all growth stages.
• Hot and dry periods followed by rains are favourable conditions for its occurrence.

Damage Symptoms:

• In seedlings, the first symptoms appear in the cotyledons, which turn yellow and eventually brown.
• A brown ring forms at the base of the petiole, causing wilting and drying of seedlings.
• In young and mature plants, the edges of leaves and areas near the veins start yellowing.
• Leaves gradually lose firmness, turn brown, droop, and fall off.
• Vascular tissues darken, showing signs of browning or blackening, with black streaks extending upward to the branches and downward to the lateral roots.
• In case of severe infection, discolouration spreads throughout the plant.
• Plants infected later in the season become stunted, produce fewer bolls, and show premature boll opening with smaller-sized balls.

Preventive Measures:

• Practice deep ploughing during summer.
• Adopt mixed cropping with non-host plants.

Control Measures:

• Drench plants with a solution of Copper Oxychloride or Trichoderma viride or Mancozeb and Metalaxyl.