Building Bridges to Battle Blackleg
Prof Ian Toth (James Hutton Institute and project lead for DeS-BL) reports on their recent knowledge exchange meeting.
Since the devastating introduction of ash dieback in 2012, plant health has been firmly on the public radar and an increased priority for our national governments. Potato blackleg disease is less well known, but still a serious issue for potato growers across the UK and in many other nations. Blackleg, caused by a bacterial pathogen called Pectobacterium, causes £50 million of crop losses in the UK each year. With no chemical controls currently available, growers use an integrated pest management (IPM) approach to control the disease. This includes improved hygiene and storage, use of disease-free starting material, crop inspections and seed certification. While such measures have made a big impact in controlling the disease, there remains much to be done.
Understanding how potatoes become contaminated and infected by Pectobacterium in the field, and how this pathogen interacts with other microbes on plants and in the soil, is key to developing robust control methods for the disease. The DeS-BL project, part of the Bacterial Plant Diseases Programme, is researching Blackleg with the aim of developing practical solutions, including a decision support tool for growers, to help improve disease management.
While the project has been progressing well since September 2020, until recently, COVID has prevented our wider team from meeting face to face (I wonder if Captain Kirk knew just how important video call technology would become!). The full team consists of scientists, industry and government representatives, many of whom have previously not met in person. Taking advantage of a brief lull in restrictions, it was possible to hold our end of year meeting (November 2021) in person, giving us the chance to get to know each other, exchange ideas and hold both formal and informal discussions over two days. Thanks to our University of Glasgow partners, the meeting was held at their Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment (SCENE) on the banks of Loch Lomond surrounded by nature and beautiful scenery.
As well as scientists from different disciplines and Scottish Government representatives from SASA, eight of our industry partners attended the event. The broad range of expertise in the room was palpable and led to many informed discussions and great ideas for further work. While the meeting was designed to include plenty of discussion, it soon became apparent that all of the conversations could have gone on for much longer. This clearly shows the importance of drawing on different types of expertise to maximise the impact of our research.
Of all the topics discussed at the meeting, one particularly captured the interest of the industry partners – bacteriocins and biocontrol. Bacteriocins are proteins produced by bacteria of one strain that can kill closely related bacterial strains. This specificity makes them ideal candidates for use as biocontrol agents against bacterial pathogens (not unlike bacteriophages, which are also being investigated by the BPD Programme’s Ralstonia Phage project). Prof Joel Milner and colleagues at the University of Glasgow are using powerful genomic techniques to identify new bacteriocins capable of killing Pectobacterium. Their aim is to purify these bacteriocins and then develop a potato seed treatment. New relationships in this area between Prof Milner and our industry partners were formed at the meeting. We hope they will continue to develop and ultimately bring these research ideas to commercial reality and so help in our fight against this devastating disease.
It was incredible to get this dynamic team together in person and to see such enthusiasm and new relationships being formed. We hope that there will be lots of similar events in the future, which will continue to build the bridge between research and practice.
Find out more about the DeS-BL project and Blackleg disease here.