Back

Soil and water microbial communities: A source of novel antibiotics for sustainable plant disease control

Iqbal, N.; Asim, N.; Malik, S.; Khan, S.; Yoo, Y.; Akbar, S.; Ullah, I.; Liu, L.; Khan, S. S.; lee, S. w.

2025-02-10 microbiology
10.1101/2025.02.06.636970 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Pathogenic microorganisms pose a significant threat to plant health and agricultural productivity worldwide. Herein, this study explores the potential of natural microbial communities as sources of biopesticides. We analyzed 20 soil and water samples from remote areas, isolating 121 colonies using nutrient agar. Antibacterial activity was assessed through agar diffusion, revealing that 12 colonies exhibited significant inhibitory effects against various pathogenic bacteria. Measurement of inhibition zones indicated that these colonies could produce antibiotics. Subsequently, molecular characterization with 16S rRNA and BLAST searches of 12 unidentified sequences highlighted substantial microbial diversity within the samples. This research underscores the promise of these natural microbial communities in developing biocontrol agents for managing plant diseases in greenhouse and field environments. Extraction and purification techniques could further refine these antibiotics, advancing sustainable agricultural practices.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.