April 2005
Bacteria vs. Fungi
A pair of new pesticides recently registered by the EPA for use against plant-damaging fungi grew from University of Idaho (UI) researcher Don Crawford’s study of bacteria found among linseed plant roots. The pesticides offer a new weapon against major fungal diseases that cause extensive damage to greenhouse, nursery, turf and agricultural crops. Crawford, a microbiology professor and director of the UI Environmental Science program, said that is the beauty of putting bacteria to work against fungi. The bacteria, which colonize the plant’s roots, produce chemical defenses at the specific points where the fungus attacks, delivering microdoses of antibiotics to specific targets at specific times.
With the investment and support of Houston-based Natural Industries, two pesticide products recently won formal approval of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Both rely on the specific strain of bacteria that Crawford discovered attacking a wide spectrum of root- damaging fungi. As a result, production has soared at the small Moscow spin-off company, Innovative BioSystems, which produces the bacteria commercially. In all, efforts by company founder Bill Kowalski, who died three years ago, to market the product began more than a decade ago. The business is now led by his son, Matt. “Without their support and perseverance, this product would not have reached the market,” Crawford said. Natural Industries markets Actinovate® SP, the commercial product, and shepherded the product through EPA registration, a five-year effort.
In January, the company’s $500,000 worth of regulatory work produced a bonus. The closely-related product, Actino-Iron, won EPA registration approval in January months earlier than anticipated. “We were able to generate sales to not only sustain the company, pay employees and satisfy investors, but also to pay for our registration, which is very expensive. It was pretty nerve-wracking through the years. The real key was EPA registration because of the inability to really talk about its biocontrol abilities when you can only sell it as a soil amendment,” Kowalski said.
When his father first traveled to the University of Idaho, his interest was in using microbes to cleanup contaminated industrial sites. His interest shifted to agricultural product after visiting UI. Kowalski’s and Crawford’s faith in the bacterium’s ability to combat fungi led to early seed and soil inoculants that were based on tests that showed plants grew better with help from the bacterium. But the company and its distributors could not talk about the bacterium’s abilities as a pesticide without violating federal law. Extensive testing and review are required by EPA to ensure the environmental, consumer, and worker safety of pesticides.
The specific strain that Crawford isolated and patented with graduate student Hyung-Won Suh in 1995 is known as Streptomyces lydicus WYEC108. The strain caught their attention because it enhanced plant growth when added to soil and fought common, economically damaging fungal diseases of plants. Now Crawford is studying bacteria found among sagebrush roots as sources of new medical antibiotics. Bacteria supply nearly two-thirds of the antibiotics used by physicians but microbiologists have barely scratched the surface in identifying potential sources of new drugs. Crawford decided to look among sagebrush roots for potential miracle drugs because the plant is a common element of the western landscapes he loves. There’s a strong chance that a plant able to survive some of the least hospitable habitats has something a little extra working in its favor. Crawford believes bacteria may help sagebrush thrive despite the constant challenges of pathogens that defeat lesser plants. (UI Press Release, 3/3/05).
