author(s)
Jayanta IN, Mallesh SB, Ramesh G, Zaheer Ahamed B, Amaresh YS and Sreedevi SC

abstract
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum Mill.) is the most popular vegetable crop world-wide. Tomato crop is known to be affected by different diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, viruses and nematodes. Among different diseases affecting tomato, root-knot and wilt complex caused by Meloidogyne incognita and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici was observed in severe form. Twenty fluorescent Pseudomonads were isolated from the healthy rhizosphere of tomato growing areas of North Eastern Karnataka by serial dilution method on King’s B medium. Dual culture technique under in vitro evaluation of fluorescent Pseudomonads against F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici revealed that the per cent inhibition of was maximum (78.52) in FP- 13 followed by FP-4 (74.82%) and FP-6 (73.71%). Least inhibition of 20.74 per cent was observed in FP-19 followed by FP-20 (35.55%). In case of nematode juvenile mortality, isolate FP-3 showed maximum inhibition of 71.05 (%), followed by FP-13 (70.54%), FP-18 (70.05%), FP-1 (69.77%), FP-6 (68.83%), FP-4 (68.33%) and FP-5 (67.83%).The highest decrease in egg hatching was recorded in isolate FP-3 (2.24), followed by FP-1 (2.41), FP-13 (2.57), FP-18 (2.83), FP-14 (5.66), FP-6 (5.83) and FP-2 (6.58). Further, seven isolates viz., FP-1, FP-3, FP-4, FP-5, FP-6, FP-13 and FP-18 were found commonly efficacious against test pathogens i.e., Meloidogyne incognita and Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici and were used for further studies.