The problem of growing rice
Rice is the staple food for about half the world's population.
Crop failures caused by plant pathogens are stillfurther aggravate the situation. Agriculture is trying to counteract this with the help of pesticides. Growing pathogen-resistant plants is the only alternative to these environmentally harmful agents and is currently only moderately successful. However, if plants are resistant to one pathogen through selection, they are usually more susceptible to other pathogens or less resistant to unfavorable environmental conditions.
How do scientists solve the problem?
For this reason, international researchThe team, which includes the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology at the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz, Graz University of Technology), has been studying the seed microbiome of rice plants for some time to establish a correlation between plant health and the occurrence of certain microorganisms. Scientists recently made a big breakthrough. They found a bacterium inside seeds that can lead to complete resistance to a particular pathogen and is naturally transmitted from one generation of plants to the next. Results published in a scientific journalNature Plants,provide a new basis for the development of biological plant protection products and further reduction of harmful biotoxins produced by plant pathogens.
Rice microbiome
In traditional rice cultivationIn the Zhejiang province of China, it was observed that one genotype of rice plants (cultivar Zhongzao39) sometimes develops resistance to the plant pathogen Burkholderia plantarii. This pathogen causes crop failures and also produces a biotoxin that can cause organ damage and tumors in humans and animals that are chronically exposed. “Until now, it was impossible to explain the sporadic resistance of rice plants to this pathogen,” says Tomislav Cernava from TU Graz. Together with the director of the institute, Gabriele Berg, and his colleague at the institute, Peter Kusstatscher, Chernava studied in detail the microbiome of rice seeds from different growing regions in the context of collaboration with Zhejiang University (Hangzhou) and Nanjing Agricultural University in China, and bsp;also Japanese Hokkaido University in Sapporo.
Bacterial composition as a decisive factor
Scientists have discovered that resistant plants havedifferent bacterial composition inside seeds than plants susceptible to diseases. In particular, bacteria of the genus Sphingomonas were significantly more common in resistant seeds. Therefore, the researchers isolated bacteria of this genus from the seeds and identified the bacterium Sphingomonas melonis as the agent responsible for disease resistance. The bacterium produces an organic acid (anthranilic acid), which suppresses the action of the pathogen and thereby makes it harmless. “It also works when isolated Sphingomonas melonis is applied to non-resistant rice plants. This automatically makes them resistant to the plant pathogen Burkholderia plantarii,” explains Tomislav Cernava.
In addition, the bacterium is fixedin certain rice genotypes and is then naturally transmitted from one generation of plants to the next. “The potential of this discovery is enormous. In the future, we will be able to use this strategy to reduce the amount of pesticides in agriculture and at the same time achieve good harvests,” says Chernava.
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A pathogen is any microorganism, as well as a special protein - a prion that can cause a pathological state of another living being.