Aflatoxigenic fungal invasion and aflatoxin contamination of groundnut can occur during
pre-harvest as well as post-harvest stages of production. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted
in the 2010 cropping season with the objective of evaluating the effect of biofumigation and soil
solarization on the population of Aspergillus spp. in treated soil, and to determine the effect of
combined use of biofumigation and/or soil solarization and fungicide seed treatment on invasion of
the crop by the fungus and its yield. The treatments consisted of solarization, biofumigation,
solarization+ biofumigation and untreated control as a main plot and carbendazim, mancozeb,
carbendazim + mancozeb fungicide seed treatment and untreated control as a sub-plot. The
experiment was laid out as a split-plot design with three replications near Babile and Dire Dawa towns
in eastern Ethiopia. Seeds of the Shulamit groundnut variety were used for the experiment The results
revealed that fungal population densities in the soil were reduced drastically due to soil solarization.
Integration of soil solarization + biofumigation with mancozeb + carbendazim seed treatment
significantly reduced infections by A. flavus and A. parasiticus, and increased seed yield by 42.1% and
70.9% over the control treatments at Babile and Dire Dawa, respectively. Soil solarization +
biofumigation in combination with fungicide seed treatments increased seed yield by up to 19.4-
42.1% at Babile and by 53-70.9% at Dire Dawa with decreased A. flavus and A. parasiticus seed
infections. It could be concluded that seed treatment using carbendazim at the rate of 2 g kg-1 seed
and mancozeb + carbendazim at the rate of (1+2) g kg-1 seed could be recommended as the best
management option for controlling invasion of groundnut by A. flavus and for increasing the yield
and quality of the crop in the region