DIRECTION · Deciphering of Root and Rhizosphere microbiome to increase host fitness in the Fusarium oxysporum- plant interaction

Deciphering of Root and Rhizosphere microbiome to increase host fitness in the Fusarium oxysporum- plant interaction

Fungal pathogens have a dramatic impact on crop productivity. Many fungal-plant interactions occur in the soil and crucially affect plant health. A particularly destructive group of root-infecting fungi cause vascular-wilts, which attack several crops, colonizing the roots and cause massive wilting. These diseases are amongst the most difficult to control, as these pathogens are usually inaccessible to chemicals being inside vasculature. Therefore, they are controlled with unspecific fumigation compounds that have a detrimental effect on soil quality. Recently the impact of soil and plant associated microbiota on plant health has been widely studied. Plant associated Microbiome can be helpful for its development in many ways. One of the crucial roles this microbiota has, is to protect the plant from invading pathogens. It has been previously reported that beneficial microbes that associate with plants interfere with disease progression. However, very little is known about the interaction between members of plant associated microbiome and pathogenic fungi that shape the disease. Therefore, it is very important to understand how microbial interactions impact on shaping a plant disease outcome. This could be a sustainable solution against the plant vascular diseases. The pathogenic fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici is a soil-borne pathogen which causes vascular wilt of tomato. The disease is difficult to control due to its non-symptomatic presence during the initial stages of fungal progression in plants. Currently control methods use extensive chemical pesticides which causes environmental pollution. As most soil fungicides are now banned by EU legislation, there is an urgent need to develop new control strategies, which need to be efficient, durable and environmental friendly. Identifying the microbial competitors or antagonists that interfere with Fusarium colonization could serve to protect the plants against this deadly disease. We hypothesized that native plant microbiome might have crucial role in controlling the disease progression of Fusarium. To investigate this, we defined the complete native microbiota from Tomato and have identified key antagonists which interfere with F. oxysporum growth. We further aim to re-construct an artificial synthetic microbial community (SynCom) by using there antagonists which could prevent the disease progression by F. oxysporum. So, overall in terms of conclusions of the action we have defined the following: 1) A comprehensive native compartment specific microbiome of tomato with a collection of bacterial isolates. 2) Identified antagonistic bacteria that interact directly/indirectly with F. oxysporum during tomato colonization.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union