Evaluation of the Antimicrobial Potential and Characterization of Novel T7-Like Bacteriophages.

The recent outbreak of blight in pome fruit plants has been a major concern as there are two indistinguishable species, and , which cause blight in South Korea. Although there is a strict management protocol consisting of antibiotic-based prevention, the area and the number of cases of outbreaks have increased. In this study, we isolated four bacteriophages, pEp_SNUABM_03, 04, 11, and 12, that infect both and and evaluated their potential as antimicrobial agents for administration against -originated blight in South Korea. Morphological analysis revealed that all phages had podovirus-like capsids. The phage cocktail showed a broad spectrum of infectivity, infecting 98.91% of and 100% of strains. The antibacterial effect was observed after long-term cocktail treatment against , whereas it was observed for both short- and long-term treatments against . Genomic analysis verified that the phages did not encode harmful genes such as antibiotic resistance or virulence genes. All phages were stable under general orchard conditions. Collectively, we provided basic data on the potential of phages as biocontrol agents that target both and