Vasilchenko, N.; Kulikov, M.; Prazdnova, E.; Gorovtsov, A.; Usatov, A.; Chistyakov, V.

Fusarium diseases cause serious damage to agricultural crops. In agricultural practice, various chemical fungicides, usually based on triazole, are often used to control fusariosis. This leads to the emergence of resistant forms among pathogenic fungi. An alternative to chemical fungicides treatments may be the use of biopreparations based on natural antagonists of Fusarium. Bacillus and Paenibacillus bacteria isolated from farmland soils exhibit a high level of antagonism against phytopathogenic fungi of the genus Fusarium. PCR-based analysis revealed that genes of non-ribosomal peptide synthases are present in the genomes of isolated bacterial strains, while these strains do not have any chitinase activity, so the antifungal effect seems to be provided predominantly by non-ribosomally synthesized peptides. The expression of the detected genes is increased in the presence of fungi during co-culturing, and this effect is strain-specific and pathogen-dependent. In light of these findings, the development of pathogen-specific drugs seems promising.