Globally, there is almost no comparison to the food losses and wastes recorded for fruits. With the Covid-19 pandemic necessitating that countries look inwards to combat hunger and improve food securitythrough proactive prevention of postharvest losses. Cell-free supernatants (CFS) of Aspergillus, Alternaria and Penicillium were tested for their preservative abilities using Agar well diffusion assay, on one hand, and direct surface application on the other hand in a complete randomize design with four treatments. The first to third were treated with cell-free supernatants of five-day grown cultures of Aspergillus, Alternaria and Penicillium and the fourth was treated with distilled water as control, three replications each containing ten (10) fresh, ripe, firm and smooth tomato fruits. Each group was dried and kept at ambient temperature for shelf life determination. Tomato fruits were recorded spoilt or deteriorated with a rating of 4 (excellent), 3 (good), 2 (fair), 1 (poor) and 0 (very poor). Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 5% level of significance was carried out. All the fungi expressed high antagonistic effects,in-vivoand in-vitro. Aspergillus CFSgave 67.7% protection compared with 25.8% recorded for the control. The study revealed that spraying tomato fruits with these non-synthetic fungicides could reduce postharvest loss.

Keywords: Antagonistic fungi, Bio-fungicides, Food loss, Tomato, Wastes.