Along several years, at the Laboratory of Plant Bacteriology and Biological Control of the Department of Plant Pathology of the Federal University of Viçosa, thousands of prokaryote isolates have been obtained from the rhizosphere, rhizoplane and phylloplane of economically important plants. Every obtained isolate is tested as biocontrol agents. As expected, the majority does not show any biocontrol potentiality and is discarded. Few are selected through time-consuming experimental biocontrol trials in greenhouse and field. Even being selected mainly for their ability to induce resistance in target plants, many of them constitutively express mechanisms of antagonism against pathogens that seem to be part of their performance while biocontrol agents.
Biological control; microbial antagonism; antibiosis; fungal diseases; bacterial diseases
