Biocontrol of plant pathogens in omics era—with special focus on endophytic bacilli

Abstract

Nearly all plants and their organs are inhabited by endophytic microbes which play a crucial role in plant fitness and stress resilience. Harnessing endophytic services can provide effective solutions for a sustainable increase in agriculture productivity and can be used as a complement or alternative to agrochemicals. Shifting agriculture practices toward the use of nature-based solutions can contribute directly to the global challenges of food security and environmental sustainability. However, microbial inoculants have been used in agriculture for several decades with inconsistent efficacy. Key reasons of this inconsistent efficacy are linked to competition with indigenous soil microflora and inability to colonize plants. Endophytic microbes provide solutions to both of these issues which potentially make them better candidates for microbial inoculants. This article outlines the current advancements in endophytic research with special focus on endophytic bacilli. A better understanding of diverse mechanisms of disease control by bacilli is essential to achieve maximum biocontrol efficacy against multiple phytopathogens. Furthermore, we argue that integration of emerging technologies with strong theoretical frameworks have the potential to revolutionize biocontrol approaches based on endophytic microbes.

Keywords:

• Endophyte
• biocontrol
• Bacillus
• disease suppressive mechanism
• omics
• microbial consortia

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the text of the article. A.A., S.M., B.K.S., and P.B.H. wrote the final version and performed all of the necessary editing. We apologize to any colleagues whose work was not cited due to space limitation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFD1400700), National Natural Science Foundation of China (32050410307: 32160672), Central Government Fund for Local Science and Technology Development (202107AA110007), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M683664XB), Yunnan First Level Research Fund for Post-doctorate Researchers (YN202103), Yunnan Oriental Training Program Funding for Post-doctorate Researchers (No. YN2020409; YN2020410), and Major Science and Technology Special Project of Yunnan Province (202202AE090025).