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Tomatoes are one of the predominant vegetable crops grown throughout the year in Tamil Nadu, India. Their perishable nature and resource-intensive cultivation make them susceptible to biotic stress. The damage caused by invasive insect pests, bacterial wilt during the rainy season, and viral diseases are major yield-limiting factors, and the farmers mostly depend on calendar-based insecticide applications for insect pest and disease management in tomatoes. The desired tomato hybrids grafted onto bacterial wilt-resistant eggplant rootstocks offer protection against bacterial wilt during the rainy season. The integrated pest and disease management (IPDM) practices consist of resistant grafted tomato seedlings (wild eggplant rootstocks EG 203 and TS 03), bioinoculants (Bacillus subtilis + Trichoderma asperellum + Purpureocillium lilacinum), pheromone traps (Phthorimaea absoluta and Helicoverpa armigera), botanicals (azadirachtin), microbial pesticides (Bacillus thuringiensis, Metarhizium anisopliae, and Beauveria bassiana), and bio-rationals, which were evaluated in four locations in two major tomato-growing tracts of Tamil Nadu. The results revealed that the treatment EG 203 eggplant rootstock-grafted tomato along with IPDM practices performed better across all experimental locations than the other treatment combinations viz., TS 03 eggplant rootstock-grafted tomato + IPDM, tomato + IPDM, grafted tomato + farmers’ practice and tomato + farmers’ practice. The EG 203-grafted tomato recorded a higher yield than the farmers’ practice with significantly superior biometric parameters. The treatment of EG 203-grafted tomato and IPDM practices can be adopted for safer tomato production by enabling a reduction in pesticide applications while enhancing productivity.

Soil borne disease poses severe problem for the mulberry cultivation during nursery plantation and established field garden which facilitates the quick spread of the disease and enhance the plant mortality resulting substantial loss in leaf yield. In recent years Synthetic fungicides has been more used for the control of soil borne diseases they causing harm for the environmental pollution and also causing negative impact on ecological imbalance. The use of bacteria having antimicrobial properties has become one of the attractive options for enhancing the sustainability of agricultural production due to their low production cost and ecofriendliness. Among them Actinomycetes, sourced from terrestrial, marine, wetland, saline, and endophyte environments, have shown potential for biocontrol applications they represent a high proportion of the soil microbial biomass and have the capacity to produce wide variety of secondary metabolites. Several strains of actinomycetes have been acknowledged as prolific producer of bioactive metabolites as antibacterial, antifungal, antibiotic. This study highlights the challenges posed by soilborne diseases, specifically root rot, in mulberry plants, detailing the pathogens involved and their impact on yield and their potential in sustainable disease management strategies by biocontrol agent, ultimately contributing to the overall well-being of mulberry cultivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]