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Several fungi act as parasites for crops causing huge annual crop losses at both pre- and post-harvest stages. For years, chemical fungicides were the solution; however, their wide use has caused environmental contamination and human health problems. For this reason, the use of biofungicides has been in practice as a green solution against fungal phytopathogens. In the context of a more sustainable agriculture, microbial biofungicides have the largest share among the commercial biocontrol products that are available in the market. Precisely, the genus Bacillus has been largely studied for the management of plant pathogenic fungi because they offer a chemically diverse arsenal of antifungal secondary metabolites, which have spawned a heightened industrial engrossment of it as a biopesticide. In this sense, it is indispensable to know the wide arsenal that Bacillus genus has to apply these products for sustainable agriculture. Having this idea in our minds, in this review, secondary metabolites from Bacillus having antifungal activity are chemically and structurally described giving details of their action against several phytopathogens. Knowing the current status of Bacillus secreted antifungals is the base for the goal to apply these in agriculture and it is addressed in depth in the second part of this review., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Oxalic acid (OA) is an important pathogenic factor during early Sclerotinia sclerotiorum-host interaction and might work by reducing hydrogen peroxide production (H2 O2 ). In the present investigation, oxalic acid-induced cell death in pea was studied. Pea plants treated with biocontrol agents (BCAs) viz., Pseudomonas aeruginosa PJHU15, Bacillus subtilis BHHU100, and Trichoderma harzianum TNHU27 either singly and/or in consortium acted on S. sclerotiorum indirectly by enabling plants to inhibit the OA-mediated suppression of oxidative burst via induction of H2 O2 . Our results showed that BCA treated plants upon treatment with culture filtrate of the pathogen, conferred the resistance via. significantly decreasing relative cell death of pea against S. sclerotiorum compared to control plants without BCA treatment but treated with the culture filtrate of the pathogen. The results obtained from the present study indicate that the microbes especially in consortia play significant role in protection against S. sclerotiorum by modulating oxidative burst and partially enhancing tolerance by increasing the H2 O2 generation, which is otherwise suppressed by OA produced by the pathogen., (© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)