Seeing the forest for the trees: Use of phages to treat bacterial tree diseases

Trees 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.     

An atypical Bacillus anthracis infection in a bull—A potential occupational health hazard

Bacillus anthracis infecting cattle is usually identified based on the typical symptom: sudden death. Bacillus anthracis causing atypical symptoms may remain undiagnosed and represent a potential occupational health hazard for, that is veterinarians and producers, butchers and tanners. In the year 2004, one case of sudden death in a dairy farm in southern Finland was diagnosed as bovine anthrax. Four years later 2008, an atypical case of anthrax was diagnosed in the same holding. The bull was taken to the Production Animal Hospital of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Helsinki because of fever, loss of appetite and a symmetrically swollen scrotal sac. Penicillin treatment cured the fever but not the swollen scrotum. Before the intended therapeutic castration, a punctuate consisting of 10 ml fluid collected into a syringe from the scrotal sac was cultivated on blood agar at 37°C. After 24 hr, an almost pure culture of a completely non‐hemolytic Bacillus cereus‐like bacteria was obtained. The strain was identified as B. anthracis using Ba‐specific primers by the Finnish Food Safety Authority (RUOKAVIRASTO). After the diagnosis, the bull was euthanized and destroyed, the personnel were treated with prophylactic antibiotics and the clinic was disinfected. In this particular case, treatment with water, Virkon S and lime seemed to be effective to eliminate endospores and vegetative cells since no relapses of anthrax have occurred in 10 years. This case is the last reported anthrax case in Finland.     

Rhizosphere immunity: targeting the underground for sustainable plant health management

Managing plant health is a great challenge for modern food production and is further complicated by the lack of common ground between the many disciplines involved in disease control. Here we present the concept of rhizosphere immunity, in which plant health is considered as an ecosystem level property emerging from networks of interactions between plants, microbiota and the surrounding soil matrix. These interactions can potentially extend the innate plant immune system to a point where the rhizosphere immunity can fulfil all four core functions of a full immune system: pathogen prevention, recognition, response and homeostasis. We suggest that considering plant health from a meta-organism perspective will help in developing multidisciplinary pathogen management strategies that focus on steering the whole plant-microbe-soil networks instead of individual components. This might be achieved by bringing together the latest discoveries in phytopathology, microbiome research, soil science and agronomy to pave the way toward more sustainable and productive agriculture.