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.

柑橘黄龙病（Huanglongbing，HLB）是一类难以防控的柑橘果树病害，给柑橘产业造成了巨额经济损失。截至目前，尚未研发出既能在离体条件下应用、又可在柑橘果园中大规模推广的该病害防控方案。本研究采用新型柑橘半叶法，证实土著柑橘内生枯草芽孢杆菌（Bacillus subtilis）L1-21可在接种4天后，将叶片中脉内的Clas病原菌数量降至原有水平的千分之一。本研究首次揭示，利用土著内生菌重塑柑橘微生物组的方法，可应用于柑橘田间以减轻这一毁灭性病害HLB的危害。