Award

This project seeks to improve food security through the development of a novel crop disease management tool. Modern agriculture relies on the heavy use of pesticides to control plant diseases and protect crops from significant losses, and many of the most important disease control products are quickly losing efficacy due to resistance development. Consequences of pesticide use include potentially negative effects on human health and the environment and selection for pesticide resistance, and the increased use of pesticides since 1960 has not resulted in a significant decrease in crop losses. Novel crop protection solutions will ensure crops are protected against diseases amid global trade and a changing climate which threaten to introduce or increase the severity of diseases in areas where they were previously insignificant. More sustainable practices are needed to protect arable lands from deterioration against the backdrop of intensive agricultural production as well as to protect effective pesticides from becoming obsolete through the selection of resistant pests and pathogens. From 2001 through 2003, actual crop loss in eleven major crops (including tomato) due to pathogens was estimated at 68% of the theoretical potential loss, compared to 61% and 26% for animal pests and weeds, respectively. This indicates a significant opportunity to improve the efficiency of plant disease management. The goal of this project is to provide seed producers with a novel and sustainable seed coating technology which will increase crop yields and food production by protecting seeds and seedlings against a diversity of diseases, and by protecting the longevity of important antimicrobials by reducing the rate of resistance development.Coating seeds with antimicrobials, mostly fungicides, to protect against disease has been practiced for centuries, and remains one of the most efficient ways of ensuring that seedlings are protected from soilborne and seedborne pathogens. Early seed coating technologies included the use of arsenic, mercury and copper, but concerns over acute toxicity, mishandling accidents such as the mass poisoning by methylmercury of 1971 in Iraq, and environmental impacts have given rise to more targeted, or site-specific, compounds. A drawback to site-specific products is an increased likelihood of resistance development compared to multi-site compounds, due to the fact that a single mutation can confer resistance. Zymtronix has developed a solution to this problem through the use of its enzyme immobilization system, which uses stabilized antimicrobial enzymes delivered as a seed coating to protect against a broad spectrum of plant pathogens. Zymtronix's enzyme system relies on the production of non-site-specific free radicals and reactive oxygen species, thereby reducing the likelihood of resistance development. Additionally, we have demonstrated compatibility with a commercial fungicide and antibiotic and shown potential for reducing pesticide application rates and reducing the probability of resistance development without compromising control. This novel method will reduce reliance on existing agrochemicals like fungicides and antibiotics, thereby decreasing the likelihood of resistance development while simultaneously providing an alternative, effective method for managing a broad spectrum of major crop diseases.For this Phase I project, we are initially targeting the devastating tomato seedling disease damping-off, which can affect nearly all crops, as well bacterial speck, an important bacterial disease of tomato that can serve as a model for many other seed-borne and soil-borne bacterial plant diseases. We will determine the efficacy of, and potential synergy between, our stabilized enzyme formula and several commercial fungicides and antibiotics in laboratory tests. We will then use that information to develop several unique seed-coating formulas. Tomato seeds treated with those formulas will be exposed to dampi