Can Plant Microbiome Studies Lead to Effective Biocontrol of Plant Diseases?

In this review, the wisdom and efficacy of studies seeking disease attenuating microbes and microbiomes only in healthy plant communities is questioned and an alternative view is posited, namely that success in biocontrol of crop diseases may also come from studies of microbiota, or at least individual species isolates, associated with diseased plants. In support of this view, I summarize the current extensive knowledge of the biology behind what is probably the most successful biocontrol of a plant disease, namely the biocontrol of crown gall of stone fruit using nonpathogenic Rhizobium rhizogenes K84, in which the biocontrol agent itself came from a diseased plant.