Abstract

To our knowledge, Japan is the country where world first biofungiside Trichoderma lignorum was registered to control tobacco soilborne diseases in 1954. During the following several decades many researchers actively studied biological control of soilborne diseases expecting if it could be a good solution to soilborne diseases which are very difficult to be controlled by chemical treatment. However, very few biofungicides have been registered and used for soilborne diseases in Japan, so far. On the other hand, recently, many biofungicides for seedborne and foliar diseases are available in the market. This may be due to the demand for environmentally-safe disease control, and moreover biofungisides attract human attention as alternative control measure of chemical fungicides. Trichoderma asperellum for rice seedborne diseases e.g. ‘Bakanae’ disease (Fusarium fujikuroi), and Bacillus subtilis for vegetable foliar diseases e.g. gray mold (Botrytos cinerea) are the two major biofungicides in Japan at the moment. In 2006, the share of biofungicide in the fungicide sales was only 0.4% (0.4 billion JPY=5.3 billion KRW) in Japan