Abstract

AbstractTrees and woody plants can be attacked by many pests and pathogens either individually or as polymicrobial infections. In particular, infections caused by tree‐specific bacterial pathogens have become more common during the last decade, causing serious concern for important tree and woody plant species in horticulture, urban environments, and forests. For example, Xylella and Pseudomonas bacteria are causing significant economic and ecological devastation throughout Europe in olive, cherry, and other stone fruits, mainly because of lack of efficient control methods and the emergence of bacterial resistance to traditional antimicrobial compounds such as copper and antibiotics. Hence, there is an urgent need for innovative approaches to tackle bacterial plant diseases. One way to achieve this could be through the application of biological control, which offers a more environmentally friendly and targeted approach for pathogen management. This review will explore recent advances in use of pathogen‐specific viruses, bacteriophages (or phages), for the biocontrol of bacterial tree diseases. Phages are an important component of plant microbiomes and are increasingly studied in plant pathogen control due to their highly specific host ranges and ability to selectively kill only the target pathogenic bacteria. However, their use still poses several challenges and limitations, especially in terms of managing the bacterial diseases of long‐lived trees. A particular insight will be given into phage research focusing on controlling Pseudomonas syringae pathovars, Erwinia amylovora, Xanthomonas species, Ralstonia solanacearum, and Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Recent milestones, current challenges, and future avenues for phage therapy in the management of tree diseases are discussed.

Highlights

  • Trees play an essential role for natural ecosystems, forming a critical source of oxygen and water, contributing to soil carbon balance, providing an ecosystem to countless organisms, and aiding in the restoration of disturbed land (Seth, 2003)

  • Phage treatments could be used in conjunction with other biological control agents in an integrated pest management (IPM) approach, which instead of pathogen eradication focuses on minimizing the crop losses in a way that is both economic for the farmer/ grower and sustainable for the environment

  • One of the first studies on phages in IPM looked at combining Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. vignaeradiatae phages with streptomycin to treat leaf spot of mungbean (Borah et al, 2000)

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Summary

Introduction

Trees play an essential role for natural ecosystems, forming a critical source of oxygen and water, contributing to soil carbon balance, providing an ecosystem to countless organisms, and aiding in the restoration of disturbed land (Seth, 2003). Filamentous phages are capable of reducing or increasing bacterial virulence in several plant-pathogenic bacteria, which could make their use as biocontrol agents challenging (Ahmad et al, 2014a, 2017; Yamada et al, 2007).

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