The effectiveness of Clonostachys rosea against Verticillium wilt (Verticillium dahliae) and early blight (Alternaria solani) diseases, as the two most important problems in tomato cultivation with significant economic losses, was determined. It was determined that C. rosea was effective on A. solani and V. dahliae and suppressed mycelial growth. Also, the C. rosea on wheat grains inoculated to plants at 20 g, 30 g, and 40 g concentrations before and after pathogens inoculation. Then, fungal discs (2 mm in diameter) from V. dahliae growing colonies were inoculated on the host plant root zone. A. solani was also inoculated (1x106 conidia ml-1) by spraying the foliar parts of the plants. Results showed that V. dahliae caused 76.0% disease severity in control plants, while the disease severity indices were 58.3%, 55.3%, and 25.3% at 20 g, 30 g, and 40 g C. rosea application, respectively. In A. solani x C. rosea treatments, the disease severities were determined as 96.6%, 63.3%, 43.6% and 46.6% in control, 20 g, 30 g, and 40 g application of C. rosea, respectively. The pathogen suppression rates by C. rosea at 30g application dose was 54.8% against A. solani and at 40 g application dose was 66.6% against V. dahliae. The effects of C. rosea on plant growth parameters were also determined. Results showed that C. rosea had a positive effect on the morphological parameters in tomato plants.

Monitoring the dynamics of the spore bank of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is essential for the sustainable management and protection of agroecosystems. The most common method for extracting AMF spores from soil is the wet-sieving technique (WST). However, this method has many disadvantages. In this study, we modified the WST using new approaches: the ultrasound wet-sieving technique (UWST) and the ultrasound centrifuge technique (UCT). We enumerated and compared the numbers and quality of spores obtained from WST, UWST, and UCT to validate the new modified techniques. We extracted AMF spores from the rhizospheres of different plants, including wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), pepper (Piper nigrum L.), parsley (Petroselinum crispum Mill.), and turfgrass (Lolium perenne L.) collected from the Van Lake basin, Turkey. The highest and lowest AMF spore numbers were observed in wheat and turfgrass rhizospheres. The UCT allowed for the extraction of the highest number of spores from all rhizospheres, followed by the UWST and WST. The UWST and WST allowed for the extraction of similar spore numbers from wheat, pepper, parsley, and turfgrass rhizospheres. Beyond the high extracted spore number, UCT was shown to be a fast and low-material-consuming approach. These findings demonstrate that the UCT can be used to efficiently extract AMF spores in future research.