Award details

The diversity, biology and dynamics of microbial agents that regulate nematode populations in the rhizosphere

Reference	BBS/E/C/00004963
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Penny Hirsch
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	1,379,318
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2008
End date	31/03/2012
Duration	48 months

Abstract

Nematode populations may be regulated in natural and disturbed ecosystems by microbial natural enemies. In some intensive production systems e.g. cereal monoculture, natural microbial enemies have increased to levels that control specific nematode pests. These 'suppressive' soils are slow to develop and difficult to exploit but provide a valuable resource for studying nematode interactions with the rhizosphere microbial community and for isolation of potential biological control agents. This project studies the population dynamics of cyst and root-knot nematode pests and their natural enemies, the bacterium Pasteuria penetrans and the fungus, Pochonia chlamydosporia. The two major targets are: a) to understand the interactions of P. chlamydosporia with its hosts, plants and other organisms in the rhizosphere at the molecular, whole organism and population level in order to develop rational biological control strategies based on this fungal agent b) to study the genomics of P. penetrans in order to discover genes that may provide novel approaches to nematode management. Key issues addressed, which relate to the success of P. chlamydosporia as a biological control agent are the role of intra-specific variation in the regulation of nematode host populations and the importance of nutrition in the transition of the fungus from a saprotroph in the rhizosphere to a parasite of nematode eggs. There is no simple relationship between the abundance of the fungus in soil and its efficacy as a biological control agent. Research on the genomics of P. penetrans is underpinned by a collaboration between Rothamsted and North Carolina State University, which aims to sequence the genome of the bacterium and be the first microbial natural enemy of a nematode to have full sequence information. Such data is used to study the interactions between the bacterium and its hosts, especially genes that relate to the infective spore attachment process and bacterial metabolism.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
Research Topics	Crop Science, Microbiology, Plant Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

I accept the terms and conditions of use (opens in new window)

export PDF file

back to list new search