Overview
In corn, the hollow tubes through which sperm from the pollen travel are called silks, visible as the threads that arise from the tips of corn cobs. Some of the most serious fungal pathogens affecting Ontario corn enter the grain through these hollow channels of the silks, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in cumulative crop losses in Ontario and Canada, as well as the accumulation of toxins in the grain, affecting the health of both humans and livestock.
Like humans, plants are inhabited and coated by a huge diversity of naturally occurring probiotic microbes. Manish N. Raizada’s lab at the University of Guelph have proposed that the cells of immobile plants have evolved to maintain specific mobile probiotic microbes that act in a manner analogous to human immunity cells: to seek and destroy invading pathogens.
With help from the Ontario Genomics SPARK program, the Raizada team aims to discover probiotic microbes inhabiting the hollow channels of Ontario corn silks. This project has huge implications for the more than 21,000 Ontario corn farmers in addition to the province’s livestock industry, grain processors, and consumers. This research will SPARK follow-up studies on pollen tube microbiomes to identify genetic markers that promote the colonization of silk-associated probiotics for use in breeding programs. The identification of probiotics which can be applied to silks in order to combat the crop diseases afflicting grain farmers will decrease the requirement for and reliance on pesticides and therefore result in more sustainable and effective industry practices.