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Impact of organic crop management on suppression of bacterial seedling diseases in rice

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Abstract

Organic farming systems can effectively control the pathogens that cause plant diseases. When rice seedlings inoculated with Burkholderia glumae at germination were cultivated on each of three independent organic soils supplied by organic growers, or on conventional soil as a control, development of seedling rot symptoms was significantly suppressed on all organic soils, but not on conventional soil. This disease-suppressive activity of the organic soils was also observed for rice seedling damping-off disease caused by Burkholderia plantarii. Interestingly, such disease suppression was completely compromised on organic soils sterilized at 121 °C, indicating biological activity included in organic soils seems to be associated with the suppression of rice seedling diseases. To explore the putative biological factor(s) conferring the disease-suppressive activity of organic soils, we isolated bacteria from the filtrates of organic soil suspensions. Among these filtrates, two bacterial isolates could suppress development of bacterial seedling rot symptoms, whereas Escherichia coli as a control could not. The 16S rDNA and rpoD nucleotide fragment sequences of two bacterial isolates conferring the observed disease-suppressive activity were highly homologous to those of Pseudomonas sp. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis of these nucleotide sequences suggested that two isolates placed in the P. fluorescens group. These results reveal that certain Pseudomonas sp. that inhabit organic soils likely play a role in the suppression of rice seedling diseases in organic farming systems.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the organic growers from Ishikawa-cho in Fukushima Prefecture, and from Wakuya-cho and Naruko-cho in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan for kindly providing organic soils for experimental rice seedling beds. This work was financially supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan through a research project entitled “Development of technologies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, 981-8555, Japan

    Sugihiro Ando, Toyoaki Ito, Takeru Kanno & Hideki Takahashi

  2. Faculty of Agriculture, Yamagata University, Tsuruoka, 997-8555, Japan

    Takashi Kobayashi

  3. Toyama Prefectural Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries Research Center, Yoshioka, Toyama, 939-8153, Japan

    Toshiyuki Morikawa

  4. NARO Agricultural Research Center, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8666, Japan

    Ken-ichiro Honda

  5. Environmental Biofunction Division, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8604, Japan

    Seiya Tsushima

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  1. Sugihiro Ando
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  2. Toyoaki Ito
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  3. Takeru Kanno
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  4. Takashi Kobayashi
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  7. Seiya Tsushima
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  8. Hideki Takahashi
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Correspondence to Hideki Takahashi.

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Fig. S1

Disease severity of rice seedling rot disease. Disease severity was assessed using a scale of 0–3: 0, healthy; 1, growth suppression and chlorosis; 2, partially dead; 3, dead. For the disease index, disease severity was calculated using the formula: [(1A + 2B + 3C)/3 N] × 100, in which A = the number of plants scored 1; B = the number of plants scored 2; C = the number of plants scored 3; N = the total number of plants. (GIF 237 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 1520 kb)

Fig. S2

Bacterial colonies that grew upon culturing the filtrate derived from organic soil suspensions of sterilized or non-sterilized organic soil from Ishikawa-cho or Wakuya-cho. Distinctive colonies were chosen for further analysis. (GIF 210 kb)

High resolution image (TIFF 1520 kb)

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Ando, S., Ito, T., Kanno, T. et al. Impact of organic crop management on suppression of bacterial seedling diseases in rice. Org. Agr. 4, 187–196 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13165-014-0067-1

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