Screening Traditional Eggplant for Potential Resistance Rootstock in Management of Bacterial Wilt Disease on Tomato

Tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum L.) suffer major yield losses due to bacterial wilt, a highly destructive disease resulting from infection by the soil-borne bacterium Ralstonia solanacearum. One effective strategy to manage this pathogen is grafting susceptible tomato varieties onto resistant rootstocks. In this study, nine traditional eggplant (Solanum melongena) accessions from MARDI MyGenebank were screened under glasshouse conditions for resistance to R. solanacearum using artificial inoculation via soil drenching. Disease symptoms were monitored for 21 days post-inoculation to assess disease severity and wilting percentage. Results revealed that terung pipit, terung rapuh 77, and terung rapuh 22 exhibited strong resistance, with wilting percentages ranging from 0.0% to 10.0% and disease index values below 1. Terung assam and terung telunjuk exhibited moderate resistance, with 33–50% wilting and disease index values ranging from 2 to 3. The remaining accessions were highly susceptible, exhibiting 55–100% wilting and disease indices of 3–4. These findings are consistent with international studies on traditional and wild Solanaceae species, highlighting the genetic diversity and resistance potential within local germplasm. The identification of resistant accessions provides promising candidates for rootstock development in grafting systems to control bacterial wilt in tomato. Future work should focus on field validation and molecular characterisation to support the integration of these accessions into sustainable tomato production systems.