Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Control journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ybcon Intervention of bio-protective endophyte Bacillus tequilensis enhance physiological strength of tomato during Fusarium wilt infection Arpita Bhattacharya a,b,1 , Ved Prakash Giri b,c,1 , Satyendra Pratap Singh b , Shipra Pandey a,b , Priyanka Chauhan a,b , Sumit Kumar Soni b , Suchi Srivastava b , Poonam C. Singh b , Aradhana Mishra a,b, ⁎ a Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad 201002, India b Division of Microbial Technology, CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow 226001, India c Department of Botany, Lucknow University, Hasanganj, Lucknow 226007, India GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Biocontrol Endophytic bacteria Antagonistic activity Defense responses Tomato wilt disease Chemical fungicides ABSTRACT The plants in their natural environment face various biotic stresses due to invading phytopathogens. Their control measures primarily involve large scale applications of chemical fungicides. The excessive use of che- micals leads to the contamination of the environment by entering the food web. To address the above concern, in the present study six antagonistic bacterial strains were screened from 344 isolates and identified through 16S rRNA sequencing. Out of these six antagonistic bacterial endophytes, Bacillus tequilensis (PBE1) (MTCC25188) was proven most effective and an eco-friendly substitute of chemical fungicides against Fusarium oxysporum for tomato wilt disease management. The antagonistic effect of PBE1 was well corroborated by dual culture plate assay and SEM micrographs. The PBE1 also showed efficient plant growth-promoting traits as it produced indole acetic acid (IAA) (31.89 μg ml -1 ), hydroxymate type siderophore (5.00 μg ml -1 ) along with phosphate solu- bilizing (9.09 μg ml -1 ) ability. The bio-protective intervention of PBE1 demonstrated 60.00% reduction of disease incidence in comparison to the pathogen infected plants. Simultaneously, enhanced physical parameters such as root length, shoot length, number of branches, fresh weight and dry weight by 1.73, 1.43, 1.71, 5.35 and 2.74 folds respectively. All the studies were performed under greenhouse conditions at 25 ± 2 °C for 30 days. Plants were grouped into six different treatments. The pathogen infection was given to 30 days old seedlings post-transplantation and PBE1 treatment was given at 7 days post-infection. The prevention of vascular bundle https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2019.104074 Received 26 March 2019; Received in revised form 12 August 2019; Accepted 16 August 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Division of Microbial Technology, CSIR-NBRI Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow 226 001, India. E-mail address: mishra.a@nbri.res.in (A. Mishra). 1 Authors contributed equally in this work. Biological Control xxx (xxxx) xxxx 1049-9644/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc. Please cite this article as: Arpita Bhattacharya, et al., Biological Control, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2019.104074