Phage combination therapies for bacterial wilt disease in tomato

TY - JOUR

T1 - Phage combination therapies for bacterial wilt disease in tomato

AU - Wang, Xiaofang

AU - Wei, Zhong

AU - Yang, Keming

AU - Wang, Jiangning

AU - Jousset, Alexandre

AU - Xu, Yangchun

AU - Shen, Qirong

AU - Friman, Ville-Petri

N1 - © 2019 Springer Nature Limited. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2019/12/2

Y1 - 2019/12/2

N2 - Bacteriophage have been proposed as an alternative to pesticides to kill bacterial pathogens of crops. However, the efficacy of phage-biocontrol is variable and poorly understood in natural rhizosphere microbiomes at timescales considering both ecological and evolutionary processes.We studied the biocontrol efficacy of different phage combinations on Ralstonia solanacearum infection in tomato. Increasing the number of phages in combinations decreased disease incidence by up to 80% in greenhouse and field experiments during single crop season. Decrease in disease incidence was explained by pathogen density reduction and selection for phage resistant but slow-growing pathogen strains, together with enrichment for bacterial species that were antagonistic towards Ralstonia solanacearum. Phage treatment did not affect existing rhizosphere microbiota. Specific phage combinations show promise as precision tools to engineer microbiomes and to control plant pathogenic bacteria

AB - Bacteriophage have been proposed as an alternative to pesticides to kill bacterial pathogens of crops. However, the efficacy of phage-biocontrol is variable and poorly understood in natural rhizosphere microbiomes at timescales considering both ecological and evolutionary processes.We studied the biocontrol efficacy of different phage combinations on Ralstonia solanacearum infection in tomato. Increasing the number of phages in combinations decreased disease incidence by up to 80% in greenhouse and field experiments during single crop season. Decrease in disease incidence was explained by pathogen density reduction and selection for phage resistant but slow-growing pathogen strains, together with enrichment for bacterial species that were antagonistic towards Ralstonia solanacearum. Phage treatment did not affect existing rhizosphere microbiota. Specific phage combinations show promise as precision tools to engineer microbiomes and to control plant pathogenic bacteria

U2 - 10.1038/s41587-019-0328-3

DO - 10.1038/s41587-019-0328-3

M3 - Article

SN - 1087-0156

VL - 37

SP - 1513

EP - 1520

JO - Nature Biotechnology

JF - Nature Biotechnology

ER -