Community analysis of phytoparasitic nematodes associated with ornamental plants at Jimma University Agriculture Campus, Ethiopia

To assess the incidence of plant-parasitic nematodes, soil samples were collected in December 2016, from three locations of Agriculture Campus of Jimma University located at 356 km Southwest of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at 7°68’N latitude and 36°83’E longitude with an altitude of 1752 m.a.s.l. The annual temperature ranges from 11.8-26.8°C with a relative humidity and mean rainfall of 91% and 1500mm, respectively. Collections were made from the rhizosphere of eight species of ornamental plants viz., Rosa spp., Colocasia esculenta, Salvia splendens, Ctenanthe oppenheimiana, Phoenix abyssinica, Aster novea-angliae, Washingtonia rubusta and Doronicum grandiflorum growing along the roadsides in the campus showing severe infestation of phytoparasitic nematodes. Following the procedure of Baermann modified techniques (Hooper et al., 2005) nematodes were extracted and identified (Siddiqi, 2001) up to genus level and enumerated from a 1 ml capacity counting dish using a Leica compound microscope.