**2. Materials and Methods**

#### *2.1. Site, Sampling, Pre-Treatment, and Selective Isolation*

Soil samples were collected from different forest locations of Bisle Ghat and Virajpet in Western Ghats regions of Karnataka, India. The samples were collected from a depth of 15–25 cm in dry sterile insulated containers and stored aseptically at 4 ◦C until subjected to plating. Samples were air dried in a hot air oven (Equitron, India) at 50 ◦C for 72 h. Pre-treated samples were ground aseptically with mortar and pestle and serially diluted up to 10−<sup>6</sup> in 10-fold dilution. The aliquots of each dilution (100 μL) were spread evenly on starch casein agar (SCA, Himedia, India) plates in triplicates supplemented with cycloheximide (30 μg/mL) and nalidixic acid (25 μg/mL). The plates

were incubated at 28 ± 2 ◦C for 14 days. Emerging colonies with different morphological characters were selected and the purified strains were maintained on International *Streptomyces* Project (ISP-2, Himedia, India) agar slants and stored at 4 ◦C as stock for further use.
