Plant Defense Stimulation and Its Impact on Plant Growth

Antimicrobial resistance development in pathogenic microbes is a significant global problem that is undercutting response potential against numerous crop diseases. For that reason, global efforts are underway toward developing control strategies that reduce the expression of pathogenic traits in microorganisms without removing microorganisms themselves. These efforts are expected to reduce the likelihood of resistance development.

One such strategy is to target communication mechanisms, such as Quorum Sensing (QS), in pathogenic bacteria, which are mediated by specific signaling molecules. A research study has revealed that beneficial microbial consortia can degrade signaling molecules and thereby prevent pathogenicity expression in target bacteria populations. This shows that beneficial microbial consortia indeed represent the capacity to disrupt pathogenic bacteria. Specifically, beneficial microbial consortia were tested against signaling molecules employed by pathogenic Pseudomonas. Therefore, the positive degrading capacity in beneficial microbial consortia suggests that they can be an effective solution against disease caused by Pseudomonas while enabling the microbial group to remain intact to allow it to deliver ecologically important functions (i.e., nutrient cycling or competitive exclusion against other Pseudomonas or other groups of bacteria). See Figure below for a summary of concepts and studies referred to in this section.