Genome sequences of candidate wheat blast biocontrol bacteria

Wheat blast, caused by a fungus Magnaporthe oryzae Triticum pathotype, has been a threat to wheat production in Brazil and some countries in South America since its first emergence in Parana state of Brazil in 1985. In February 2016, it emerged for the first time in Bangladesh and devastated more than 15,000 hectares of wheat in a large area of the South-western and western parts of Bangladesh. At present, it is unclear whether resistant wheat varieties against M. oryzae are available and the degree to which fungicide application for the neck blast management is reliable. Applications of plant probiotic bacteria are known to promote growth of host plants and suppress phytopathogenic fungi by various mechanisms. However, there are no biocontrol agents so far developed against the wheat blast fungus. To find potential biocontrol agents, we screened several hundreds of plant probiotic bacteria isolated from the surface sterilized seeds and organs of various crop plants including wheat and rice in Bangladesh. Some of the isolates, BTS-3 and BTS-4 displayed potent inhibitory activities against the wheat blast fungus in vitro and suppression of disease in vivo. We sequenced these two bacterial isolates and assembled the genomes using the services of MicrobesNG.