Abstract: Plant bacterial wilt is a devastating soil-borne disease caused by Ralstonia solanacearum. The use of Ralstonia solanacearum avirulent strains for the biological control is one of the key strategies to prevent and control the bacterial wilt. By taking the interaction system between Solanum lycopersicum and Ralstonia solanacearum as the research object, two inoculation treatment groups were set up, which were inoculated with the avirulent strain FJAT-1458 and the virulent strain FJAT-91, respectively. At the same time, the uninoculated tomato plants were used as the blank control group (CK), in order to analyze the effects of Ralstonia solanacearum stress with different pathogenicity on the rhizosphere bacterial community composition of tomato. The Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing technology was used to detect 15 rhizosphere soil samples in the three groups. A total of 1 301 685 high-quality sequences were obtained and annotated as 6 989 operational taxonomic units (OTUs), covering 38 phyla, 98 classes, 271 orders, 421 families and 770 genera. Among them, Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobiota, Bacteroidota, Myxococcota, Acidobacteriota and Planctomycetota were the dominant bacterial phyla in the rhizosphere soil of tomato plants. The hierarchical clustering analysis showed that the composition and structure of the bacterial community in the rhizosphere of tomato were significantly changed by the stress of the virulent strain FJAT-91, while the bacterial community composition of the non-pathogenic strain FJAT-1458 treatment group was more similar to that of the control group. The further analysis on the abundance and diversity index of rhizosphere bacteria showed that under the stress of virulent strain FJAT-91, the Shannon index of the rhizosphere bacterial community in tomato plants was significantly lower than that in the control group (P＜0.01), indicating that the diversity of rhizosphere bacterial community was degraded. In contrast, under the stress of avirulent strain FJAT-1458, both the Chao1 index and Shannon index were slightly higher than those in the control group (P＞0.05), indicating that the stability and diversity of rhizosphere bacterial community were enhanced to a certain extent. Under the stress of Ralstonia solanacearum with different pathogenicity, there were significant differences in the diversity of rhizosphere bacteria. The Chao1 index of the avirulent strain FJAT-1458 treatment group was significantly higher than that of the virulent strain FJAT-91 treatment group (P＜0.05), and the Shannon index was significantly higher than that of the FJAT-91 treatment group (P＜0.01). Through the linear discriminant analysis (LEfSe), the differential indicator species in the rhizosphere bacterial community were further clarified. These results preliminarily revealed the effects of virulent and avirulent strains of Ralstonia solanacearum on the diversity and distribution characteristics of bacterial communities in the rhizosphere soil of tomato plants.