Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is known as the poor man’s orange and it is extensively grown worldwide. It is affected by various diseases like fungal, bacterial, viral and nematodes. Among these, root knot nematodes (RKN) which is the most important plant parasitic pathogen that causes significant crop loss alone or in combination with fungal and bacterial wilt pathogens. Unscientific usage of pesticides aggravates densely virulent strains, apart from polluting the environment and causing human health hazards. The use of different combinations of biocontrol agents with respect to consortia is effectively managed with multicidal action against the target pathogen. In this present investigation, the study was carried out to explore the activities of microbial consortia against root-knot nematode of tomato under in vitro conditions. The experiment was carried out at the Department of Plant Pathology, KRCCH, Arabhavi. The 10 treatments were studied with different combinations of biocontrol agents. The results of our investigation show that among the tested bioagents T9 (Trichoderma harzianum + Metarhizium anisophile + Purpureocillium lilacinum + Beauveria bassiana + Bacillus subtilis + Pseudomonas fluorescens) exhibited the minimum egg hatching per cent of 55.65 at 96 hours of exposure period when compared to T10 (untreated control) recorded 11.85 per cent of egg hatching.

Bio-control agents, egg hatching, microbial consortia, root knot nematode

The present findings have demonstrated that the different bioconsortia treatments showed the inhibitory effect on root knot nematode egg hatching under in vitro condition. All tested consortia treatments recorded minimum egg hatching per cent (55.50-85.00) over untreated control (97.50) at 96 hours after incubation. Among the treatments, minimum egg hatching per cent was recorded inT9 (T. harzianum + B. subtilis + P. lilacinum + B. bassiana + M. anisophile + P. fluroscence) with 55.50 per cent over T10 (untreated control) with 97.50 per cent.

Nivedita, Sumangala Koulagi, Prashantha A., Vijaya Kumar Rathod, Vijaymahantesh and Iranna Hejjegar (2023). In vitro efficacy of Microbial Consortia Against Tomato Root Knot Nematode [Meloidogyne incognita (Kofoid and White)]. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 15(12): 01-04.