Management of citrus huanglongbing with native citrus endophytes

Huanglongbing is one of the uncontrollable citrus tree diseases resulting in tremendous loses to citrus industry. However, until now there has been no control strategy to manage this disease in vitro and on large scale in citrus grove. Here we showed that indigenous citrus endophyte Bacillus subtilis L1-21 could reduce the Clas pathogen to 1000 times after 4 days inside leaves midribs using novel citrus-half leaf method. Our study highlights for the first time restructuring of citrus microbiome using indigenous endophytes that could be used in the citrus field to mitigate the devastating disease HLB.

黄龙病（Huanglongbing, HLB）是一类难以防控的柑橘树病害，给柑橘产业造成了巨额经济损失。截至目前，尚未有可在体外环境及柑橘果园中大规模应用的该病防治策略。本研究发现，本土柑橘内生枯草芽孢杆菌（Bacillus subtilis）L1-21可通过新型柑橘半叶法，在接种4天后将叶片中脉内的CLas病原菌数量降低至初始水平的1/1000。本研究首次证实，利用本土内生菌可重构柑橘微生物组，该策略有望应用于柑橘大田以减轻这种毁灭性的HLB病害危害。