10 July 2026
Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich are investigating how natural viruses that specifically infect bacteria can help plants fight off bacterial pathogens. These bacteriophages open up new prospects for more environmentally friendly plant protection and could make an important contribution to safeguarding harvests in the face of increasing heatwaves and growing pressures on agriculture.
Bacteria can cause disease not only in humans and animals, but also in plants. Throughout the world, bacterial plant diseases cause significant crop losses. This is a growing problem for agriculture, with crops coming under increasing pressure from pathogens, heat, drought, and other consequences of climate change. With plants already weakened by extreme weather conditions, protecting them becomes even more important, as stable harvests are a key prerequisite for a secure food supply.
Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich are therefore working on new, more sustainable ways to protect plants in a targeted manner. The focus is on bacteriophages, or phages for short – natural viruses that exclusively infect bacteria. They are generally harmless to humans, animals, and plants, while their key advantage lies in their ability to target specific bacteria with high precision.
Conventional antibacterial agents often have a broad-spectrum effect. This means they can affect not only harmful bacteria but also beneficial microorganisms that are important for healthy soils and plants. Frequent use of such agents can also lead to pathogens becoming resistant, causing the agents to lose their effectiveness over time.
Phages could offer an alternative. They recognize their bacterial hosts with a high degree of specificity and could combat pathogens without disrupting the plant’s entire microbiome. This makes them well suited to an approach to crop protection that aims to be more targeted, resource-efficient, and sustainable.
In a recent study published in the journal Cell Reports, Dr. Sebastian Erdrich investigated how bacteriophages work during a bacterial infection of plants. Erdrich completed his doctoral degree at Forschungszentrum Jülich’s Institute of Bio- and Geosciences in the institute divisions Biotechnology (IBG-1) and Plant Sciences (IBG-2). The study also involved researchers from the teams led by Prof. Julia Frunzke at IBG-1, Dr. Borjana Arsova at IBG-2, and Prof. Guido Grossmann from the Institute of Cell and Interaction Biology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
The model plant used in the study was Arabidopsis thaliana, a relative of rapeseed and cabbage that is frequently used in research. The plants were infected with the bacterial pathogen Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris. Some of the infected plants were also treated with a suitable bacteriophage.
The study revealed that, during the testing period, infected plants treated with phages grew just as well as non-infected control plants. The phages reduced the number of harmful bacteria, and the bacteria exhibited lower virulence – in other words, they caused less severe disease. At the same time, the plants had a weaker immune response than the infected plants without phages. This suggests that the plants suffered less severely from the infection.
The research builds on previous work in which the Jülich scientists had isolated new phages against important bacterial plant pathogens. They also investigated how such phages can be enriched on seed surfaces. This resulted in a technology solution from Forschungszentrum Jülich – a seed coating containing biological agents – that can be further explored in collaboration with interested partners.
The idea behind it is simple and practical: the protection is applied directly to the seed. If the young plant later comes into contact with harmful bacteria, the phages could already be active at the site of infection. They could thus provide a form of biological protection right from the start.
Such approaches are becoming increasingly important, particularly against the backdrop of climate change. Heatwaves, droughts, and other stress factors can weaken crops and further threaten yields. According to estimates, around 10 % of global food production is currently lost to bacterial plant diseases. Seeds are an important route of transmission for such pathogens, as they can travel on or inside seeds and infect young plants as soon as they germinate. This is precisely where Jülich’s technology solution come into play. By coating the seeds with biological agents such as bacteriophages, this cycle of infection could potentially be interrupted at an early stage in the future.
The results from Jülich and Düsseldorf show that bacteriophages could do more than simply reduce the number of harmful bacteria. They also appear to influence the interaction between the plant and the pathogen: the plant remains more resilient, while the bacteria cause less damage. In this way, the researchers are laying an important foundation for new, sustainable plant protection strategies.
https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/innovation/business/technologies/matrix-bioeffectors-coat-seeds
Erdrich SH, Keilhammer M, Sharma S, Zupinski M, Schurr U, Grossmann G, Frunzke J & Arsova B, (2026), Phage biocontrol reduces the disease burden and modulates plant immunity through suppression of bacterial virulence Cell Reports 45(7):117622 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2026.117622
Head of Bacterial Networks and Interactions
Head of research- Root Dynamics group
