Papaya fruits at color stage 4 (more yellow than
green) were used in this study. The fruits were harvested
from a commercial plantation at Homagama, Sri Lanka.
Sixty papaya fruits were surface sterilized with 75%
ethanol and each fruit was wounded (0.5 cm deep and
1.2 cm diameter) in the center with a no 2-cork borer.
Wounded fruits were inoculated with 0.1 ml of
103 spore ml1 conidia suspension of C. gloeosporioides
and held at 28C for 2 h. Fifteen of the inoculated fruits
were then dipped either in 6 l of 2% sodium bicarbonate
or in the aqueous solution (6 l) of C. oleophila containing
2 108 cfu ml1
. In the combination treatment 15 fruits
were initially dipped in 2% sodium bicarbonate for
15 min and allowed to air dry for 5 min. They were then
dipped in an aqueous suspension of C. oleophila for
15 min (Teixido et al., 2001). The control treatment
consisted of dipping a set of 15 inoculated fruits in water
for 15 min. Fruits were allowed to air dry for 5 min after
treatments and were packed in a commercial packaging
and held at 13.5C and 95% RH for 10 days. The
commercial packaging consisted of a corrugated carton
(47 cm 42 cm 19 cm) that held a total of 6 kg of
fruits. Each fruit was sleeved with Styrofoam netting
(Macbollan Polymer (Private) LTD, Colombo, Sri
Lanka). At completion of the incubation period lesion
diameter was measured in cm. Subsequently, a section at
the junction of healthy and diseased tissue was cut and
homogenized in 0.1 M phosphate buffer, pH 6.8. The
preparation was serially diluted and 0.1 ml of the
dilutions plated on NYDA or PDA. The NYDA plates
were incubated at 25C for 24–48 h and observed for the
growth of the C. oleophila. The PDA plates were
incubated for 5 days at 28C and observed for the
growth of C. gloeosporioides (Sivakumar et al., 2000).
The experiment design was a complete randomized
design with 15 replicates. Data