Effectiveness of 3 antagonistic bacterial isolates to control Rhizoctonia solani Kühn on lettuce and potato.

Rhizoctonia solani causes yield losses in numerous economically important European crops. To develop a biocontrol strategy, 3 potato-associated ecto- and endophytically living bacterial strains Pseudomonas fluorescens B1, Pseudomonas fluorescens B2, and Serratia plymuthica B4 were evaluated against R. solani in potato and in lettuce. The disease-suppression effect of the 3 biocontrol agents (BCAs) was tested in a growth chamber and in the field. In growth chamber experiments, all 3 BCAs completely or significantly limited the dry mass (DM) losses on lettuce and the disease severity (DS) caused by R. solani on potato sprouts. Strain B1 showed the highest suppression effect (52% on average) on potato. Under field conditions, the DS on both crops, which were bacterized, decreased significantly, and the biomass losses on lettuce decreased significantly as well. The greatest disease-suppression effect on potato was achieved by strain B1 (37%), followed by B2 (33%) and then B4 (31%), whereas the marketable tuber yield increased up to 12% (B1), 6% (B2), and 17% (B4) compared with the pathogen control at higher disease pressure. Furthermore, in all experiments, B1 proved to be the most effective BCA against R. solani. Therefore, this BCA could be a candidate for developing a commercial product against Rhizoctonia diseases. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the high potential of endophytes to be used as a biological control agent against R. solani under field conditions.