Biocontrol of plant diseases : boosting the plant’s resistance using biobased products (BioBoost)

Because of the increasing concerns on the negative impact of chemical pesticide use in plant disease control, at EU-level more stringent regulations on the application of pesticides have been implemented, together with the promotion of low-pesticide-input strategies. The latter include the so-called “Integrated Pest Management (IPM)” aiming at a more sustainable plant protection with a focus on prevention and biocontrol of diseases/pests. Therefore biocontrol agents (BCAs) can be applied, being either (micro-)organisms or compounds from natural origin, that exert their biocontrol activity in a direct way (antagonism with the pathogen), and/or indirectly via the plant by induction of its so-called “Induced Systemic Resistance (ISR)”. The unique complementary expertise of the research groups CMPG-PFI (Prof. B. Cammue) and CSCE (Prof. B. Sels) led to identification of novel BCAs, on a recently developed ISR-platform, in waste streams of natural materials, which were obtained through controlled catalytic biorefinery and fractionation allowing stable and consistent BCA preparation. We demonstrated that these BCAs exert their biocontrol activity against different fungal diseases with improved performance as compared to existing commercial inducers of plant resistance. In this project we will (i) further identify their active components, which is necessary from a regulatory point-of-view, (ii) analyse their presence in additional feedstocks, (iii) investigate their ISR-inducing activity in planta (spectrum of resistance, mode of action, application method, …), and (iv) consolidate IP of at least one of these novel BCAs, as a basis for long-term valorisation of the research results.

Keywords:biocontrol of plant diseases, catalytic refining of biobased chemicals, circular bio-economy

Disciplines:Biological control