Groups of bacteria can work together to better protect crops and improve growth

Some bacteria, called plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), can promote plant health or protect them from pathogens and are used commercially to help crops. To further improve agricultural yield, it is useful to identify factors that may improve PGPB behavior.

Many PGPBs form sticky communities of cells, called biofilms, that help them adhere to plant roots. A group of scientists in North Carolina and Massachusetts were interested in finding other plant-related bacteria that could help PGPB better adhere to plant roots, in hopes of increasing the number. of PGPB cells attached to the roots of their beneficial functions.

Using a vegetative-based approach, they identified several bacterial strains that increased PGPB adherence to plant roots over time. These results indicate that the physical or chemical interactions between these different bacterial strains lead to long-term maintenance of PGPB on roots.

“Our results highlight how bacteria can use each other to their own advantage. These findings could be used to create groups of bacteria that will be able to work together to produce crop plants. better protect and enhance growth, “said Elizabeth Shank, the senior scientist involved in this research. “The results of this research can also be used to better understand and design microbial therapies that may improve crop yield in agricultural conditions.”

To conduct this research, Shank and her colleagues conducted a full-screen screening of bacteria obtained from wild plant roots, ensuring that known bacteria could come into contact on plant roots in native terrestrial environments. They also looked at how other native microbes could alter the behavior of all PGPB species, emphasizing the importance of understanding how groups of plant-related microbes affect plants.

This research focused specifically on PGPBs currently used in agricultural remedies so that their results would be relevant to commercial interventions. According to Shank, “One important impact of our work may be to encourage agricultural biotechnology companies to consider using groups of multi-bacteria (rather than solitary) in the search for biological remedies. better and longer to improve crop yields and help increase food production. “

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Their research also demonstrates how a reasonably quick and easy screen can identify important bacterial interactions and provides a starting point for future work exploring the mechanisms of these cell-to-cell relationships. For more information, read “Increasing Bacterial Community Membership Bacillus subtilis Maintain the roots of the Arabidopsis thaliana” In the Iris Phytobiomes. For more information, including 60-second video, visit: https: //susannalharris.com /research /.