(Corporación Universitaria Lasallista, 2017) Rojas, Sharon Acosta; A. Villa, Jorge
Disease control in several crops is
mainly made by using chemical methods, which
are expensive and hard to get for small scale
producers. The biologic control is an alternative
that can be helpfulin terms of expenses and
environmental sustainability, as elements from
the same crop are used, such as in the case of
the cocoa´s shell, which is usually discarded.
Objective. The objective of this study was to
evaluate the healthy fraction of cobs and its
performance after receiving two treatments: a
biologic one and another chemically synthetized.
Materials and methods. The study was performed
in Santo Domingo, Antioquia, Colombia, in
a small cocoa crop in which 17 trees in three
terains were chosen. A biologic control comprised
of a lixiviate with the Trichoderma spp. fungus
was sprinkled on the tree (n=6), a chemically
syinthetized treament that induced resistance
(K3
PO3
) injected in the tree´s log (n=5) and
a control with no application (n=6). After the
application, the sick and healthy cobs were
counted and the humid weight of the seeds was
registered during 2 months in each treatment.
Results and conclusions. No significant difference
was found in the fractions of the healthy cobs
and the performance. Nevertheless, the biologic
control had an improvement in comparison to
the control, indicating that it can be a potentially
alternative at a lower cost for small crops.
