Phosphate is one of the most important nutrients for plant growth and development, and only 0.1% of the phosphate in soils is available to plants. Currently, the use of excess phosphate fertilizer has caused surface and ground water pollution and water eutrophication, resulting in algal blooms in lakes and oceans. Therefore, it is imperative to explore alternative ways to solve these problems for sustainable agricultural production and improvement of soil fertility, while protecting the environment. Microorganisms from the rhizosphere and within plants are able to solubilize insoluble soil phosphate, making it available to plants. Five high phosphate solubilizing bacteria from our bacterial endophyte library were chosen for this study and identified as Pantoea vagans IALR611, Pseudomonas psychrotolerans IALR632, Bacillus subtilis IALR1033, Bacillus safensis IALR1035 and Pantoea agglomerans IALR1325. All five bacteria significantly promoted tall fescue growth in vitro. Greenhouse experiments showed that IALR1325 significantly promoted pepper and tomato growth, and IALR632 was the best in promoting tomato growth. In addition, all these bacteria had extracellular acid phosphatase and phytase activities. One of the mechanisms for phosphate solubilization by bacteria is pH reduction caused by gluconic acid production. Our results indicate that P. agglomerans IALR1325 is a promising bacterium for future applications.

The ascomycete pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is a necrotrophic pathogen on over 400 known host plants, and is the causal agent of white mold on dry bean. Currently, there are no known cultivars of dry bean with complete resistance to white mold. For more than 20 years, bean breeders have been using white mold screening nurseries with natural populations of S. sclerotiorum to screen new cultivars for resistance. It is thus important to know if the genetic diversity in populations of S. sclerotiorum within these nurseries a) reflect the genetic diversity of the populations in the surrounding region and b) are stable over time. Furthermore, previous studies have investigated the correlation between mycelial compatibility groups (MCG) and multilocus haplotypes (MLH), but none have formally tested these patterns. We genotyped 366 isolates of S. sclerotiorum from producer fields and white mold screening nurseries surveyed over 10 years in 2003-2012 representing 11 states in the United States of America, Australia, France, and Mexico at 11 microsatellite loci resulting in 165 MLHs. Populations were loosely structured over space and time based on analysis of molecular variance and discriminant analysis of principal components, but not by cultivar, aggressiveness, or field source. Of all the regions tested, only Mexico (n=18) shared no MLHs with any other region. Using a bipartite network-based approach, we found no evidence that the MCGs accurately represent MLHs. Our study suggests that breeders should continue to test dry bean lines in several white mold screening nurseries across the US to account for both the phenotypic and genotypic variation that exists across regions.

Pathogen exposure to sublethal doses of fungicides may result in mutations that may represent an important and largely overlooked mechanism of introducing new genetic variation into strictly clonal populations, including acquisition of fungicide resistance. We tested this hypothesis using the clonal plant pathogen, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. Nine susceptible isolates were exposed independently to five commercial fungicides with different modes of action: boscalid (respiration inhibitor), iprodione (unclear mode of action), thiophanate methyl (inhibition of microtubulin synthesis) and azoxystrobin and pyraclostrobin (quinone outside inhibitors). Mycelium of each isolate was inoculated onto a fungicide gradient and sub-cultured from the 50–100% inhibition zone for 12 generations and experiment repeated. Mutational changes were assessed for all isolates at six neutral microsatellite (SSR) loci and for a subset of isolates using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). SSR analysis showed 12 of 85 fungicide-exposed isolates had a total of 127 stepwise mutations with 42 insertions and 85 deletions. Most stepwise deletions were in iprodione- and azoxystrobin-exposed isolates (n = 40/85 each). Estimated mutation rates were 1.7 to 60-fold higher for mutated loci compared to that expected under neutral conditions. AFLP genotyping of 33 isolates (16 non-exposed control and 17 fungicide exposed) generated 602 polymorphic alleles. Cluster analysis with principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) identified fungicide-exposed isolates as a distinct group from non-exposed control isolates (PhiPT = 0.15, P = 0.001). Dendrograms based on neighbor-joining also supported allelic variation associated with fungicide-exposure. Fungicide sensitivity of isolates measured throughout both experiments did not show consistent trends. For example, eight isolates exposed to boscalid had higher EC50 values at the end of the experiment, and when repeated, only one isolate had higher EC50 while most isolates showed no difference. Results of this support the hypothesis that sublethal fungicide stress increases mutation rates in a largely clonal plant pathogen under in vitro conditions. Collectively, this work will aid our understanding how non-lethal fungicide exposure may affect genomic variation, which may be an important mechanism of novel trait emergence, adaptation, and evolution for clonal organisms.

A plant production system called Veggie was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014. In late 2015, during the growth of Zinnia hybrida cv. 'Profusion' in the Veggie hardware, plants developed chlorosis, leaf curling, fungal growth that damaged leaves and stems, and eventually necrosis. The development of symptoms was correlated to reduced air flow leading to a significant buildup of water enveloping the leaves and stems in microgravity. Symptomatic tissues were returned to Earth on 18 May 2016 and were immediately processed to determine the primary causal agent of the disease. The presumptive pathogen was identified as Fusarium oxysporum by morphological features of microconidia and conidiophores on symptomatic tissues; that is, by epifluorescent microscopy (EFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), metabolic microarrays, and ITS sequencing. Both EFM and SEM imaging of infected tissues showed that germinating conidia were capable of stomatal penetration and thus acted as the primary method for infecting host tissues. A series of ground-based pathogenicity assays were conducted with healthy Z. hybrida plants that were exposed to reduced-airflow and high-water stress (i.e., encased in sealed bags) or were kept in an unstressed configuration. Koch's postulates were successfully completed with Z. hybrida plants in the lab, but symptoms only matched ISS-flown symptomatic tissues when the plants were stressed with high-water exposure. Unstressed plants grown under similar lab conditions failed to develop the symptoms observed with plants on board the ISS. The overall results of the pathogenicity tests imply that F. oxysporum acted as an opportunistic pathogen on severely high-water stressed plants. The source of the opportunistic pathogen is not known, but virulent strains of F. oxysporum were not recovered from unused materials in the Veggie plant pillow growth units assayed after the flight.

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