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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1554992
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Strategies for Enhancing Plant Resilience to Phytopathogenic Microbes View all 9 articles
Development of a Lytic Ralstonia Phage Cocktail and Evaluation of Its Control Efficacy Against Tobacco Bacterial Wilt
Provisionally accepted
Haoxin He 1
Ke Yi 2* Lei Yang 2 Yongfeng Jing 2 Lifu Kang 2 Zhihao Gao 2 Dong Xiang 2
Ge Tan 2
Yunsheng Wang 1 Qian Liu 1 Lin Xie 1 Shiya Jiang 1 Tianbo Liu 3* Wu Chen 1*- 1 College of Plant Protection, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China
- 2 China Tobacco Hunan Industrial Co., Ltd, Changsha 410014, China, Changsha, China
- 3 Hunan Tobacco Science Research Institute, Changsha 410004, China, Changsha, China
Bacterial wilt (BW) caused by Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum is a devastating soil-borne disease. Bacteriophages are important biocontrol resources that rapidly and specifically lyse host bacteria, showing good application potential in agricultural production. This study isolated nine phages (YL1-YL9) and, using host range and pot experiments, identified two broader host range phages (YL1 and YL4) and two higher control efficacy phages (YL2 and YL3), which were combined to obtain five cocktails (BPC-1-BPC-5). Pot experiments showed that BPC-1 (YL3 and YL4) had the highest control efficacy (99.25%). Biological characterization revealed that these four phages had substantial thermal stabilitygood thermal stability and pH tolerance. Whole genome sequencing and analysis showed that YL1, YL2, YL3, and YL4 belongedbelong to the genus Gervaisevirus. AlphaFold 3 predictions of tail fiber protein II structures showed that YL1 differed significantly from the other phages. Amino acid sequence alignment revealed that the ORF66 (YL1) "tip domain" of ORF66 (YL1) contained a higher proportion of aromatic and positively charged amino acids. However, the surface of the ORF69 (YL4) "tip domain" in ORF69 (YL4) exhibited more positively charged residues compared tothan ORF66 (YL2) and ORF70 (YL3). These characteristics are hypothesized to confer a broader host range to YL1 and YL4. This study demonstratesfound that phages assembling a broad host range and high control efficacy have better biocontrol potential, providing high-quality resources for the biological control of BW.
Keywords: Bacteria Wilt (BW), Ralstonia solanacearum, Ralstonia phage, phage cocktail, control efficacy, tail fiber
Received: 03 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Yi, Yang, Jing, Kang, Gao, Xiang, Tan, Wang, Liu, Xie, Jiang, Liu and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ke Yi, China Tobacco Hunan Industrial Co., Ltd, Changsha 410014, China, Changsha, China
Tianbo Liu, Hunan Tobacco Science Research Institute, Changsha 410004, China, Changsha, China
Wu Chen, College of Plant Protection, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, Hunan Province, China
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