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The objective of this study was to find an environment friendly method of ginseng storage disease control using a natural plant extract. Essential oil was evaluated in terms of its antifungal ability against a variety of ginseng storage pathogens, and a variety of essential oils was conducted in order to assess the possibility of applying them as a component of a disease control strategy. Direct treatment with essential oil was demonstrated to exert a ginseng storage control effect. Methyl eugenol and thymol were shown to exert a mycelial growth inhibition effect of 80% on PDA media, using a paper disc containing 200 ppm of essential oil against Botrytis cinerea. The application of direct methyl eugenol treatment to ginseng resulted in a profound control effect. Both spray and dipping treatment of each methyl eugenol as well as thymol, evidenced a disease develoment of 10-20% as compared with the over 80% observed from all non-treated packages. Methyl eugenol in the large packages resulted in a disease index of 0.60 in the two essential oil treatments and also a small diseased area, as compared with the disease index of 1.65 and the wide diseased area observed in the non-treatment groups. Treatment with a mixture (methyl eugenol + thymol) in the synergistic effect test resulted in a relatively wide diseased area, as no discernable synergistic effect was detected. Methyl eugenol and thymol can be utilized as control agents in an environmentally friendly ginseng storage treatment, owing to the avirulent and clear effects detected in this study. In particular, ginseng must be ingested when fresh, and this is why a product for the control of ginseng storage diseases is so necessary.

Cylindrocarpon destructans is a soil-borne plant pathogenic fungus causing root rot on ginseng and trees. Rapid and exact detection of this pathogen was practiced on ginseng seedlings by nested PCR using speciesspecific primer set. The second round of PCR amplification by Dest 1 and Dest 4 primer set formed 400 bp of species-specific fragment of C. destructans from the product of first round of amplification by ITS 1 and ITS 4 primer set. In the PCR sensitivity test based on DNA density, nested PCR detected to the limit of one fg and it meant the nested PCR could detect up to a few spores of C. destructans. Also, nested PCR made it possible to detect the pathogen from ginseng seedlings infected by replantation on artificial infested soil. Our nested PCR results using species-specific primer set could be utilized for diagnosis of root rot disease in ginseng cultivation.