Oomycetes attack a huge variety of economically and ecologically important plants. These pathogens release, detect and respond to signal molecules to coordinate their communal behaviors including the infection process. When signal molecules are present at or above threshold level, single zoospores can infect plants. However, at the beginning of a growing season population densities of individual species are likely below those required to reach a quorum and produce threshold levels of signal molecules to trigger infection. It is unclear whether these molecules are shared among related species and what their chemistries are.

Calonectria pseudonaviculata (Cps) poses an increasing threat to boxwood, a major nursery crop and iconic landscape plant worldwide. Here, we report on a potent biocontrol agent that produces small sage green (SSG) colonies on potato dextrose agar. SSG is a bacterial strain recovered from Justin Brouwers boxwood leaves with unusual response to Cps inoculation. Water-soaked symptoms developed on leaves 2 days after inoculation then disappeared a few days later. This endophyte affected several major steps of the boxwood blight disease cycle. SSG at 10⁷ cfu/mL lysed all conidia in mixed broth culture. SSG at 10⁸ cfu/mL reduced blight incidence by >98% when applied one day before or 3 h after boxwood were inoculated with Cps. Its control efficacy decreased with decreasing bacterial concentration to 10³ cfu/mL and increasing lead time up to 20 days. When applied on diseased leaf litter under boxwood plants, SSG reduced Cps sporulation and consequently mitigated blight incidence by 90%. SSG was identified as a new member of the Burkholderia cepacia complex with distinct characters from known clinical strains. With these protective, curative, and sanitizing properties, this Burkholderia endophyte offers great promise for sustainable blight management at production and in the landscape.

Phytophthora species are known as “plant destroyers” capable of initiating single zoospore infection in the presence of a quorum of chemical signals from the same or closely related species of oomycetes. Since the natural oomycete population is too low to reach a quorum necessary to initiate a disease epidemic, creation of the quorum is reliant on alternate sources. Here, we show that a soil bacterial isolate, Bacillus megaterium Sb5, promotes plant infection by Phytophthora species. In the presence of Sb5 exudates, colonization of rhododendron leaf discs by 12 Phytophthora species/isolates was significantly enhanced, single zoospores of P. nicotianae infected annual vinca and P. sojae race 25 successfully attacked a non-host plant, Nicotiana benthamiana as well as resistant soybean cultivars with RPS1a or RPS3a. Sb5 exudates, most notably the fractions larger than 3 kDa, promoted plant infection by improving zoospore swimming, germination and plant attachment. Sb5 exudates also stimulated infection hypha growth and upregulated effector gene expression. These results suggest that environmental bacteria are important sources of virulence signal providers that promote plant infection by Phytophthora species, advancing our understanding of biotic factors in the environmental component of the Phytophthora disease triangle and of communal infection of plant pathogens.

Background: Burkholderiasp. SSG is a bacterial endophyte isolated from boxwood leaves showing a resistant response to infection by the boxwood blight pathogenCalonectria pseudonaviculata. SSG acted as a protective and curative biocontrol agent for boxwood blight and as a bio-sanitizer of disease inoculum in the field. Many gene clusters involved in antibiotic production and plant growth promotion (PGP) were found in the genome, giving this endophyte great application potential as a treatment for plant protection. However, the PGP features have not been documented. This study investigated the plant growth promotion activity of SSG in boxwood.Methods: To determine whether SSG is a plant growth promoting bacterium, four PGP traits, auxin and siderophore production, nitrogen fixation and phosphate solubilization, were examined in the laboratory with colorimetric or agar plate assays. The plant growth promoting activity of SSG was tested on three boxwood varieties characterized by slow, intermediate and fast growth rates, namely Justin Brouwers, Buddy and Winter Gem, respectively. These plants were drenched with an SSG cell suspension or water and washed plant weight was compared before and after treatment to determine growth changes after 10 months.Results: The SSG culture was sustainable on nitrogen free media, suggesting that SSG may fix atmospheric nitrogen. It was also a strong phosphate solubilizer and a potent siderophore and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) producer. Significant growth promotion was observed on boxwood cultivars Justin Brouwers, Buddy and Winter Gem 10 months after plant roots were drenched with SSG cells. The growth rate of treated plants was 76.1, 58.3, and 37.3% higher than that of the control, respectively. The degree of growth promotion was significantly different among plant varieties, notably more pronounced with the slow and intermediate growers. This study demonstrates that the SSG bacterium has multiple PGP traits and is a prospective plant biofertilizer.