Crop cultivation in salinated soils is one of the major agricultural challenges world-wide. The aim of the present work was to improve tomato fruit yield by protecting these plants against soil-borne pathogens and to promote their growth in salinated soil. Twenty one percent of the tomato plants grown in salinated Uzbek soil showed disease symptoms, indicating the presence of tomato pathogens in this soil. The dominant pathogen, which causes tomato foot and root rot, was isolated and was identified as F. solani. Fifty two bacterial strains from strain collections of five different institutes were evaluated for their ability to protect plants against tomato foot and root rot after bacterization of the seeds and infestation of soil with the isolated F. solani pathogen. Infestation of the soil with F. solani resulted in an increase of the percentage of diseased plants from 21 to 46. Priming of seedlings with the eight selected bacterial strains, reduced this proportion to as low as 19 ％. In addition, in the absence of an added pathogen, three strains namely P. putida 1T1, P.
biological control tomato tomato foot and root rot Fusarium solani rhizobacteria
Dilfuza Egamberdieva Gabriele Berg Vladimir Chebotar Igor Tikhonovich Faina Kamilova Shamil Z Validov Ben Lugtenberg
National University of Uzbekistan, 100174 Tashkent, Uzbekistan Leiden University, Institute of Biolo Institute of Environmental Biotechnology, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria Bisolvi Inter, Podbelsky Shosse, 3, 196608 Pushkin 8, Saint-Petersburg, Russia All-RussianResearch Institute for Agricultural Microbiology (ARR1AM), Saint-Petersburg-Pushkin, Russ Leiden University, Institute of Biology, Leiden, The Netherlands