Deploying Viruses against Phytobacteria: Potential Use of Phage Cocktails as a Multifaceted Approach to Combat Resistant Bacterial Plant Pathogens

Abstract

Plants in nature are under the persistent intimidation of severe microbial diseases, threatening a sustainable food production system. Plant-bacterial pathogens are a major concern in the contemporary era, resulting in reduced plant growth and productivity. Plant antibiotics and chemical-based bactericides have been extensively used to evade plant bacterial diseases. To counteract this pressure, bacteria have evolved an array of resistance mechanisms, including innate and adaptive immune systems. The emergence of resistant bacteria and detrimental consequences of antimicrobial compounds on the environment and human health, accentuates the development of an alternative disease evacuation strategy. The phage cocktail therapy is a multidimensional approach effectively employed for the biocontrol of diverse resistant bacterial infections without affecting the fauna and flora. Phages engage a diverse set of counter defense strategies to undermine wide-ranging anti-phage defense mechanisms of bacterial pathogens. Microbial ecology, evolution, and dynamics of the interactions between phage and plant-bacterial pathogens lead to the engineering of robust phage cocktail therapeutics for the mitigation of devastating phytobacterial diseases. In this review, we highlight the concrete and fundamental determinants in the development and application of phage cocktails and their underlying mechanism, combating resistant plant-bacterial pathogens. Additionally, we provide recent advances in the use of phage cocktail therapy against phytobacteria for the biocontrol of devastating plant diseases.

Keywords: anti-phage defense; biocontrol; phage cocktail therapy; plant-bacterial pathogen; polyvalent phage.

Figure 1

Schematic illustration representing the bacteriophage particle morphology, mechanism of penetration in the host bacterial cell, and different types of life cycles (created with BioRender.com, accessed on 23 November 2021).

Figure 2

Steps and critical factors involved in the isolation, characterization and optimization of bacteriophages to achieve maximum biocontrol efficacy against plant pathogenic bacteria.

Figure 3

A schematic representation of multiple pathways by which phytopathogenic bacteria can achieve phage resistance.

Figure 4

A schematic model comparing the mechanism and efficiency of mono-phage and phage cocktail therapies for the management of plant pathogenic bacteria (created with BioRender.com, accessed on 2 December 2021).