Is the bacterial endophyte community, living in Glera (Vitis vinifera) plants, active in biocontrol?

This project aims at characterizing the molecular and functional properties of endophytic bacteria that colonize Vitis vinifera L. cv. Glera (Prosecco) in order to select plant growth-promoting bacteria as biocontrol agents to stimulate plant growth and improve soil and plant health. This work is focused on two antimicrobial abilities of endophytes: cyclic lipopeptides (LPs) and siderophores production. LPs are small cyclic peptides, belonging to fengycin, surfactin and mycosubtilin families, with known antimicrobial activities. The analysis of genes coding for LP synthetase, the enzyme which synthesize LPs, has demonstrated that 20% of the analyzed strains carry the gene encoding for at least one of the LP synthetases investigated. In addition, CAS-agar microbiological assay indicated that some of the isolated endophytic strains were able to produce siderophores. Future work will be required to verify the antimicrobial/antifungal activity in vivo and in vitro of selected strains and to determine their ability to re-colonize and move within plant tissues, in order to develop biocontrol growth-enhancing inoculants for Glera grapevine cultivations.