Certain bacteria, known as plant-growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), can improve plant health or protect them from pathogens and are used commercially to help crops. To further improve agricultural yields, it is helpful to identify factors that can improve PGPB behavior.
Many PGPB form sticky communities of cells, known as biofilms, that help them adhere to plant roots. A group of scientists in North Carolina and Massachusetts were interested in finding other plant-associated bacteria that could help PGPB better adhere to plant roots, with the hope that increasing the number of PGPB cells attached to roots would increase their beneficial activities.
Using a liquid-growth-based method, they identified multiple
bacterial strains that increased the adherence of PGPB to plant roots over time. These results indicate that the physical or chemical interactions between these different bacterial species result in better long-term maintenance of PGPB on roots.
"Our results highlight how bacteria can use each other for their own benefit. These findings could be used to create groups of bacteria that are able to work together to better protect crop plants and improve their growth," said Elizabeth Shank, the senior scientist involved with this research. "The results of this research might also be used to better understand and design microbial treatments that could improve
crop yields in agricultural settings."