Of plant disease

___________________________________ David N. Dowling and Fergal O’Gara

There is increasing commercial and environmental interest in the use of microbebased agents as alternatives to, or in combination with, chemicals for controlling the spread and severity of a range of crop diseases. The identification of specific microbial metabolites that are able to control certain plant diseases has led to the development of strategies for improving the performance and predictability of the microbial strains that produce these metabolites for application in the agricultural industry. This article focuses on antimicrobial metabolites produced by fluorescent pseudomonads, discusses their role in suppressing fungal diseases of important crops and reviews the prospects of genetically manipulating the producer organisms to improve the efficacy of these biocontrol agents.

The ability of some soils to suppress plant disease has been well documented. An important example is the development of soils suppressive to Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici (Ggt), the causative agent of ‘take-all’ of wheat. Such natural examples of biological control have been attributed to the indigeneous beneficial rhizosphere microflora (see Glossary), especially fluorescent pseudomonads. Numerous mechanisms may account for these biocontrol properties (see Glossary), including the production of inhibitory compounds or metabolites. Microbial metabolites such as siderophores (see Glossary) and secondary metabolites with antimicrobial properties are considered to play a major role in disease suppression (see Table 1).

Metabolites with biocontrol properties have been reported from diverse members of the beneficial rhizosphere flora: however, those produced by the fluorescent pseudomonads have received the most attention. This is probably due to the abundance of this diverse group of bacteria and their obvious importance in the rhizosphere, coupled with the relative ease with which they can be genetically manipulated.

Fluorescent pseudomonads produce a variety of metabolites, many of which are inhibitory to other microorganisms and some of which are implicated in the biological control of plant pathogens.The identification of a link between a metabolite(s) and the suppression of a particular disease is an on-going goal of many research groups, which the use of recombinant DNA (rDNA) techniques has facilitated. Some of the criteria used to indicate that a particular metabolite has a primary role in biological control are shown below.

· Mutants defective in metabolite(s) are unable to show inhibition of the pathogen in the laboratory.

· The biocontrol ability of the mutants is reduced in the field.

· Complementation of the mutant with wild-type DNA sequences restores biocontrol ability.

· The purified metabolite shows fungicidal or antimicrobial properties.

· The metabolite may be detected in situ (i.e. in the rhizosphere) when producing strains are present.

The ability to fulfil some or all of these points provides good evidence for the involvement of a particular metabolite in biocontrol. A selection of plant diseases controlled by specific metabolites are summarized in Table 1.