Effect of Trichoderma harzianum on nutritional quality and antioxidant activity of tomato

Tomato is an important vegetable crop with good nutritional quality and antioxidant activity. Pests and diseases and pesticides too reduced their nutritional quality. For this we used Trichoderma harzianum isolates BHU51 and BHU105 and their consortium for study of nutritional quality of tomato fruits, in which plants treated with T. hrazianum isolates and challenged with soilborne pathogen Sclerotium rolfsii. Biochemical analysis have been done for measurement of total phenol content (TPC), lycopene, protein, vitamin C content etc. and antioxidant activity such as 1,1-diphenyl -2-pycryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) and hydroxyl radical scavenging activity, iron chelation capacity and reducing power of tomato fruit extract. Consortium of the Trichoderma isolates showed the highest TPC (2.072 mgGAEg-1dw), lycopene (20.136 mg/kg fw) content, followed by individual Trichoderma treatments while the lowest was recorded in the pathogen inoculated control. Antioxidant activity DPPH (51.04%), hydroxyl radical scavenging activity (45.48%) and ferrous ion chelating activity (51.84%) also recorded highest in the consortium of Trichoderma treatments followed by individual Trichoderma treatments. In this study consortium of BHU51 and BHU105 showed better results than the individual Trichoderma treatments.