The pathogen, Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn is a polyphagous fungus and has a vast potential of attacking a wide range of host plants causing host decay, damping –off, stem rot, crown rot ,stemcanker, root rot, fruit decay and foliage diseases. The stem rot is an emerging devastating disease incarnation rating next in importance to Fusarium wilt with a seedling mortality of 37% under optimum climatic conditions. Because of high incidence and crop importance, the present studywas carried out to manage the disease with application of different plant extracts (botanicals), biofumigant releasing crop residues and biocontrol agents both under in vitro and field conditions. Out of 11 botanicals including two commercial formulations of neem (neemgold, neemazil) testedat 5,10,20,30,40% and 1,2,3,4,5% concentrations respectively revealed that seed extracts of Meliaazedarach and leaf extract of Adhatoda vasica showed maximum inhibition in mycelial growthwithin the range of 44.38 to 44.25% followed by Murraya koenigii (37.77%) and Tagetes erecta(37.62%).The commercial formulations of neem compared to other treatments were foundstatistically superior to inhibits mycelial growth. In general, higher concentration resulted in moreinhibition of the R. solani, above 50 % inhibition was recorded at concentration of 40 per cent,

maximum being in neemgold (60.53%) compared to 5% or 10%. Among different crop residues, cauliflower and cabbage were found most effective in reducing the incidence of carnation stem rot to 22.28 and 24.25% from 48.34% registered in control. The plant and flower characters such as plant height, stem length, no. of flowers/plant, flower size/plant and no. of days to first floweringget reduced to 142 compared to 157 days. The average colony forming unit of the pathogen reducedto 22.83x103 from 58.12x103 in one cropping season. Antagonists, Trichoderma viride, T. harzianum and Bacillus subtilis resulted into mycelial inhibition of 65.08, 63.70 and 55.05%.

However in field the highest disease control of stem rot was achieved in integrated treatments whenthe rooted cuttings of carnation were pretreated with neemgold or neemazil for 20 minutes as diptreatment and planted in soil amended with T. viride and T. harzianum by giving disease control between 63-73%.