Dr. Quan Zeng, UWM Alumni and current Associate Scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, will present a talk about his work entitled, “How Flower Microbiome Influences Host-Pathogen Interaction in Fire Blight.” Read more about Dr. Zeng’s work here.

The abstract is as follows:

Due to the nutrient rich nature and the ephemeral presence, flowers present unique opportunities to understand the assembly and function of microbiome on plants. From the plant pathology perspective, flowers are important natural openings and infection sites of many plant pathogens such as the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora. In this project, we aimed to understand how microbiome on flowers could influence the fire blight infection, by interacting with the pathogen, the host, and the environment. Through investigation of the microbiome development on apple flowers, we identified that microbiome at early stage of bloom is composed of a highly diverse groups of microbes. At later stage of bloom, two keystone families, Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonadaceae, out compete others and dominate on apple flowers. Investigation of the microbiome-pathogen interaction identified a negative correlation of Pseudomonas and E. amylovora on flower stigma. Strong priority effect, particularly niche pre-emption, was identified between the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora and the natural microbiome. Through an in vitro co-culturing experiment, we observed that Pseudomonas, but not Pantoea and Erwinia, strongly drives the meta-transcriptome of the Panthoea-Pseudomonas-Erwinia community. We also identified yeast-like fungi from the flower microbiome that induce systemic acquired resistance in apple flowers and provide effective control of fire blight. Together, research findings from this study suggests apple flower microbiome, through affecting pathogen population, behavior, and host susceptibility, plays a critical role in fire blight infection and has great potential for its biocontrol.

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM in Lapham S162, preceded by an informal Q&A from 3:45 – 4:00 PM.