Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Importance
The increasing demand for food supply requires more-efficient control of plant diseases. The use of probiotics, i.e., naturally occurring bacterial antagonists and competitors that suppress pathogens, has recently reemerged as a promising alternative to agrochemical use. It is, however, still unclear how many and which strains we should choose for constructing effective probiotic consortia. Here we present a general ecological framework for assembling effective probiotic communities based on in vitro characterization of community functioning. Specifically, we show that increasing the diversity of probiotic consortia enhances community survival in the naturally diverse rhizosphere microbiome, leading to increased pathogen suppression via intensified resource competition and interference with the pathogen. We propose that these ecological guidelines can be put to the test in microbiome engineering more widely in the future.
SUBMITTER: Hu J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5156302 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Hu Jie J Wei Zhong Z Friman Ville-Petri VP Gu Shao-Hua SH Wang Xiao-Fang XF Eisenhauer Nico N Yang Tian-Jie TJ Ma Jing J Shen Qi-Rong QR Xu Yang-Chun YC Jousset Alexandre A
mBio 20161213 6
Bacterial communities associated with plant roots play an important role in the suppression of soil-borne pathogens, and multispecies probiotic consortia may enhance disease suppression efficacy. Here we introduced defined Pseudomonas species consortia into naturally complex microbial communities and measured the importance of Pseudomonas community diversity for their survival and the suppression of the bacterial plant pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum in the tomato rhizosphere microbiome. The sur ...[more]