Vol. 9, Special Issue 12, Part I (2025)

Bio-control agents are mainly used as an eco-friendly disease management approach to control the plant pathogens and promote healthy growth of plants. Many fungal and bacterial species were identified as bio-control agents. Among fungal bio-control agents Trichoderma harzianum is used against many pathogens infecting various crops. Its efficacy can be affected by biotic, abiotic and mass production procedures. Generally, T. harzianum mass production is done by using PDA or PDB along with suitable carrier substrate. In the present study, the instant white medium developed by NIPHM, Hyderabad for the mass production of T. harzianum was compared with PDA for its growth as well as evaluated to assess its bio efficacy against selected pathogens of small cardamom viz., Rhizoctonia solani, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides and Fusarium oxysporum. It was observed that, T. harzianum mass produced using NIPHM media was found to be effective in inhibiting the growth of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides (81.35%), Rhizoctonia solani (75.70%) and Fusarium oxysporum (72.56%) 120 hours after inoculation. Apart from it, NIPHM media has the advantage of being user friendly, cost effective and quick process in media preparation in comparison to FDA, BAM methods. With the minimum skill and basic laboratory infrastructure facilities, a farmer can mass produce T. harzianum quickly at the farm level. Utilization of instant medium would help to achieve the target of clean and safe food production and the bio efficacy is equivalent to existing methods.