Effect of pesticides on plant-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions
2011
Krisch, J., University of Szeged, Szeged (Hungary). Institute of Food Engineering | Bóna, Zs., University of Szeged, Szeged (Hungary). Institute of Food Engineering | Eifert, T., University of Szeged, Institute of Food Engineering, Szeged (Hungary) | Sipos, D., University of Szeged, Szeged (Hungary). Institute of Food Engineering | Manczinger, L., University of Szeged, Szeged (Hungary).Department of Microbiology | Vágvölgyi, Cs., University of Szeged, Szeged (Hungary).Department of Microbiology
The main interactions between plants and microbes are classified as pathogenic, saprophytic and beneficial. Plants provide two living areas for microorganisms, the rhizosphere and the phyllosphere. Saprophytic microbes in the soil degrade large organic molecules and release essential elements for plant growth in an available form. Pathogens can attack plants causing various diseases which lead to serious economic loss and in some cases to food shortage. Beneficial microbes are often use in the modern agriculture as biofertilizers (nitrogen fixing), phytostimulators (root-elongation by auxin production), rhizoremediators (pollutant degradation) or as biopesticides (exclusion of pathogens). Most phytopathogenic microbes are fungi and fungicides are intensively used to protect crops and prevent yield loss. Beside fungicides, herbicides are also frequently sprayed out on the fields. The toxic effect of pesticides is not limited to the target organisms; non-target microbes are also frequently damaged. Pesticides can cause decrease in the number of saprophytes and beneficial microbes, and the frequent use of fungicides can lead to increased resistance of target fungi, which will squeeze other microorganisms out of the phyllosphere. The fungicides used in our experiments decreased the number of soil fungi but they recovered after 6-8 weeks. The number of soil bacteria increased parallel to the decrease of fungi then returned to the baseline. Among the phyllosphere bacteria we found fungicide degraders; after a given time the fungicide-sensitive fungi were able to grow on fungicide containing media inoculated with these bacteria. We can conclude that the use of pesticides affects the number and distribution of rhizosphere and phyllosphere microbes and also their interactions with each other and with the plants. Further studies are required to elucidate the biochemical and genetic background of these changes.
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