Screening of Microbial Biocontrol Agents

Plant diseases caused by biological factors have brought great losses to crop yield and quality. A variety of strategies can be used to prevent and control plant diseases. Although the use of chemical agents has significantly increased crop yields, there are potential adverse effects on soil ecosystems, the environment and human health. Therefore, there is a need to develop eco-friendly methods to control plant diseases while reducing the associated health risks. Induction of systemic resistance by microorganisms is an important strategy for plant disease control by biological control agents. Induced resistance is a plant state that, once activated, builds enhanced defenses through sufficient stimulation. Screening microbial biocontrol agents with inducing resistance potential can effectively inhibit the activity of plant pathogens, reduce plant damage and promote plant growth.

Screening of Microbial Biocontrol Agents

Microbial biocontrol agents are natural beneficial microorganisms that can grow on artificial media and show the highest inhibitory activity against pathogens. It uses microorganisms to induce plant disease resistance. It has the characteristics of broad-spectrum disease resistance, long duration, controllable expression time and space of disease resistance, and most of the inducers are pollution-free to the environment. Creative BioMart Microbe provides several strategies to accelerate the process of screening microbial biocontrol agents with inducing resistance potential.

• Culture and Preparation of Microbial Strains

Various microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, have great potential against plant pathogens and can therefore be used as biological control agents. We have established a culture and preparation platform for various strains, which can be used for isolation, screening, cultivation and storage of microbial strains.

• Identification of Strains with Inducing Resistance Potential

We can extract genomic DNA of strain and use it as template to design and synthesize related primers for PCR amplification. The PCR amplification products were sequenced to obtain the successful alignment of the DNA sequence, and finally the strain with inducing resistance potential was screened.

Figure 1. The recombinant PeFOC1 protein induced systemic acquired resistance in tobacco. (Li S.; et al. 2019)

• Determination of Resistance-related Enzyme Activity in Plant Systemic Acquired Resistance

Plant induced resistance is achieved through the activity of defense enzyme system. Therefore, we can measure the activity of resistance-related enzymes in plant systems, including peroxidase (POD), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL), β-1, 3 glucanase and chitinase (CHI).

• Study on the Mechanism of Action of Microbial Biological Control Agents

Understanding the mechanism of action of microbial biological control agents through proteomic analysis will contribute to the development of more effective and safer biological control agents.

Why Choose Creative BioMart Microbe?

• The experienced technical team can provide culture and preparation services of different strain sources.
• Professional technical team for you to tailor the more appropriate resistant strain screening program.
• One-stop service, speed up the research process.

As an expert in the microbial technology industry, Creative BioMart Microbe is committed to the development of biological control agents. If you have related research needs or would like to know more about our services, please feel free to contact us.

Reference:

1. Li, S., et al. A novel protein elicitor PeFOC1 from Fusarium oxysporum triggers defense response and systemic resistance in tobacco. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2019, 514(4): 1074-1080.