Properties of Erwinia Amylovora Phages From North America and Germany and Their Possible Use to Control Fire Blight

Phage therapy for plant disease control with a focus on fire blight

“…Recently, Born et al [75] found that none of the twenty-four tested novel E. amylovora-specific phages originating from Switzerland contained a lysogeny control region in their genome, indicating strictly lytic life-cycles. Müller et al [76] studied properties of E. amylovora bacteriophages collected from North America and Germany and found that phages ФEa104 and ФEa116 reduced fire blight symptoms on flowers and immature pears significantly better than ФEa1h and ФEa100. Based on their PCR analysis results using primers specific for American phages, they found that the phages from Germany isolated by Müller and co-workers seem to be different from the North American bacteriophages.…”

“…At present, control of E. amylovora with bacteriophages is under investigation mainly in Canada and in the United States of America. Studies in Europe are currently limited to only a few countries with a primary focus on the morphology, molecular characterization, and host range studies of E. amylovora phages and examination of phage efficacy during in vitro conditions [61,67,[74][75][76][77]. Apart from some exceptions, these investigations do not report any field experiments with these phages.…”