Determinants of Pseudomonas putida WCS358 involved in inducing systemic resistance in plants

Pseudomonas putida WCS358 is a plant growth-promoting rhizobacterium originally isolated from the rhizosphere of potato. It can suppress soil-borne plant diseases by siderophore-mediated competition for iron, but it has also been reported to result in induced systemic resistance (ISR) in Arabidopsis thaliana. Bacterial determinants of this strain involved in inducing systemic resistance in Arabidopsis were investigated using a Tn5transposon mutant defective in biosynthesis of the fluorescent siderophore pseudobactin, a non-motile Tn5 mutant lacking flagella, and a spontaneous phage-resistant mutant lacking the O-antigenic side chain of the lipopolysaccharides (LPS). When using Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato as the challenging pathogen, purified pseudobactin, flagella and LPS all triggered ISR. However, the mutants were all as effective as the parental strain, suggesting redundancy in ISR-triggering traits in WCS358. The Botrytis cinerea-tomato, B. cinerea-bean and Colletotrichum lindemuthianum-bean model systems were used to test further the potential of P. putida WCS358 to induce ISR. Strain WCS358 significantly reduced disease development in all three systems, indicating that also on tomato and bean WCS358 can trigger ISR. In both tomato and bean, the LPS mutant had lost the ability to induce resistance, whereas the flagella mutant was still effective. In bean, the pseudobactin mutant was still effective, whereas this mutant has lost its effectivity in tomato. In both bean and tomato, flagella isolated from the parental strain were not effective, whereas LPS or pseudobactin did induce systemic resistance.