Current and future investigations on the antagonistic activity of Physarum species from Zea mays on plant pathogenic fungi causing mycotoxin contaminations and damping off diseases

Some Myxomycete species are fungivorous e.g. Badhamia utricularis and some of them produce antifungal substances. Therefore, they hold the potential to be used in biocontrol as antagonists to fungal plant pathogens. Mycotoxigenic fungi contaminating feed and food with secondary metabolites bear considerable health risks for animals and humans and are an unsolved problem in agriculture. Damping off diseases caused by a variety of soil born fungi, attacking seedlings and small plantlets via the root system are one of the most difficult problems to be managed in nurseries and in the field. Both groups of fungi cause significant economic losses and alternative approaches to combat these plant pathogens are needed.
In our laboratory wild isolates of several Physarum species, collected in agricultural experimental fields in Austria from maize plants (Zea mays), are tested on their antagonistic activity against plant pathogenic fungi causing mycotoxin contaminations and damping off diseases. Results of in vitro confrontation tests between P. gravidum against the mycelium and spores of mycotoxigenic fungi belonging to the genera Fusarium, Aspergillus, Penicillium and Alternaria as well as results for P. cinereum against a set of plant pathogenic damping off fungi belonging to the genera Phytophtora, Pythium, Rhizoctonia, Sclerotinia etc. are presented.
A project - in pipeline - which aims to, elucidate the behavior of plasmodia in soil or soil like environments, establish the production o f biomass of different Myxomycete life cycle stages in small scale, and investigate the in vivo activity of plasmodia in a real plant-pathogen system is presented and discussed.

Jaar van publicatie:2020