Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Endophytes: The Hidden Microbes Inside Plants

Transcript

Endophytes: The Hidden Microbes Inside Plants · Hydroponics Daily

0:00
Hello there, and welcome back to
0:01
Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
0:06
I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and I am the founder of Eutrema Limited,
0:12
and we make premium fertilizers, novel biostimulants, and organic biopesticides.
0:18
And we do have some biological living microbial products, but none that we sell
0:24
into the hydroponic sector.
0:25
But today I want to talk about one that I've never sold and never had any dealings
0:31
with, but is really interesting.
0:33
And that is the idea of applying endophytes to plants as a biostimulant.
0:40
Now, endophytes are a beneficial bacteria or a beneficial fungus.
0:44
And rather than, say, a mycorrhiza, which lives around the plant roots or the
0:50
plant growth promoting rhizobacteria or PGPRs for short, that live in the soil
0:55
and feed the plant roots,
0:58
these sort of beneficial symbiotic microbes.
1:02
Endophytes actually live between the cells in the tissues of the plants.
1:07
And these can be beneficial, but if you're a micropropagator,
1:11
then obviously if you're trying to get sterile conditions, they can be a disadvantage
1:15
because they contaminate the agar gel that you're trying to grow your micropropagated plants on.
1:21
Some plants contain lots of endophytes. Other plants don't. For a while,
1:25
we didn't even know that endophytes existed.
1:28
Required powerful and very precise microscopy to discover them.
1:34
And a lot of microbes can't be cultured, so you couldn't just dab a leaf into some agar and find them.
1:42
So we'll go on to what they are, what they do, and potential products that contain them.
1:48
And you should find this fairly interesting.
1:51
So what they actually do and how they help the plant, often it's many of the
1:54
same functions that a beneficial microbe living outside of the plant may confer,
2:01
such as drought, salinity, heat or cold tolerance, osmotic regulation,
2:06
altered hormone signaling, and improved water relations.
2:09
So maybe it produces a hormone or a biochemical that helps the plant resist
2:15
stress, or it might eat up the precursors, metabolize the precursors to you.
2:22
Deleterious hormones. So one very common thing that microbes do is they metabolise ACC.
2:29
I don't know what that stands for, but it's a precursor to ethylene,
2:32
which normally is an inhibitory hormone.
2:35
Other things they can do is they can help absorb iron by producing a chemical
2:42
called aciderophore, or they can solubilise phosphorus.
2:45
And in some cases, they can even fix nitrogen inside
2:48
the plant tissues and that is where one of the big
2:51
big companies in endophytes has
2:54
been working a company called exotic technologies i'll talk
2:57
more about them in a second and then obviously biotic
3:00
stress reduction so can they help suppress pests and
3:03
diseases as they attack the plant so a
3:06
famous case study is is the cool
3:10
season pasture grasses host the ipicloae fungi
3:13
that's interesting because has got an umlaut over the e and i've
3:16
never seen a scientific name that has
3:19
an umlaut on it before let me check if that's correct yes
3:22
it is every day is a school day and today i learned that you can have an umlaut
3:26
in a scientific name and yeah epichloe is a systemic and seed transmissible
3:33
endophyte of tall fescue grasses endemic to eurasia and north africa wow that is pretty impressive.
3:40
And this endophyte helps protect the grasses against insect attack.
3:45
Some fungal endophytes confer habitat-specific stress tolerance.
3:50
The same fungus from a hot spring grass can make a crop more heat tolerant,
3:55
while a coastal isolate may confer salt tolerance.
3:59
And this idea underpins many modern products that you can buy for cereal crops.
4:05
So they're taking the endophytes from wild grass plants
4:08
and then trying to put them into grass
4:12
crops like wheat that isn't they're not adapted to heat or salt like conditions
4:19
so really interesting concept there as we say these are systemic so they're
4:23
all around the plant and they can actually get into the seed which a lot of
4:27
microbes cannot there are some caveats and some safety issues with them though.
4:31
Pasture endophytes, the insect protective alkaloids, they're like an alkaloid
4:36
is a nitrogen-containing compound, a special that's often to do with anti-hibivory.
4:42
They can affect animal health if the wrong type of microbe is used. So, you know.
4:49
The people who sell these endophytes have to be really certain about that.
4:52
And then the yield outcomes with nitrogen-fixing endophyte bacteria can be mixed
4:56
across environments and programs.
4:58
So some of the companies, many of the companies that sell nitrogen-fixing bacteria
5:03
over egg how much nitrogen they can actually deliver.
5:07
So there's some really big agrochemical companies that
5:10
have invested heavily in microbial biostimulants and
5:14
microbial biostimulant companies that have said
5:16
this will replace say 50% of
5:20
your nitrogen and the farmers have reduced their nitrogen by 50%
5:23
and they've not it's not been replaced by the microbes because
5:26
the you know everything comes with
5:29
a cost and nitrogen fixation is very energy
5:32
intensive whether you're doing it with microbes or
5:35
with harbour bosch factories so the
5:39
big company cortiva did they used to be dow i
5:42
don't know i've given up trying to they always change their names a
5:45
lot of agrochemical companies they've got a microbe called a
5:48
methylobacterium symbioticum sp23 or
5:52
blue n and that's an endophytic folium bacterium that
5:55
enters via stomata colonizes leaf cells and fixes atmospheric nitrogen into
6:00
ammonia sounds great doesn't it we put on loads of crops not just cereals sugarcane
6:05
ornamentals and things like this the technical sheets emphasize endophytic colonization
6:10
and And company trials show variable yead response.
6:15
So I've not heard of that one before, so it's not taking over the world.
6:19
The one I have heard of is Exotic Technologies Envita, and that's an endophytic nitrogen fixer.
6:25
And the species is Glucanacetobacter.
6:30
And I think Exotic Technologies comes from a spin-out from Nottingham University.
6:36
They were pushing it for many, many years, almost
6:40
like decades this like exotic technologies was
6:44
a spin out they just sort of sat there and then recently they had loads of investments
6:49
and you saw them at a load of trade shows and as like as i say i'm the founder
6:54
of utreema and we're a bootstrap company everything we don't take investment
6:58
from you know the city of london or wall street,
7:01
all the profits come from selling products and we sort of build it up sustainably
7:05
like that and we often exhibit at trade shows or visit trade shows and it can
7:09
become a bit downheartening.
7:12
Downheartening depressing almost to see startup companies in biostimulants just
7:18
come along with massive stands and loads of investment loads of people and a
7:21
shiny stand and shiny people,
7:23
beautiful staff and things like this and um so you know we're going to take
7:27
over the world and you're like oh blimey have we missed a trick here but then
7:31
you don't you might see them for a few years, and then they sort of disappear.
7:34
You don't see them at the trade shows again. And so...
7:40
Almost when you're in the biosteement industry and you're fighting for your
7:42
life, it's always good to see, remember which were the companies that were really
7:46
big and which were the technologies that were really big and that are no longer there.
7:51
As I say, Exotic is still around. They've had a big bump of investment recently.
7:54
But if we look at their balance sheet on the, or their, yeah,
7:58
their balance sheet on Companies House in the UK, we can see that they have
8:02
got returned earnings last year of minus 24 million pounds.
8:10
So that doesn't tell me that they're selling a lot of product and
8:12
they are heavily got a lot of money invested in
8:15
this and things have to turn around fairly soon for those investors they
8:19
were minus 16 and a half million in 2023 and they're now minus 23.28 million
8:26
pounds so not enviable from my perspective a lot of companies a lot of buy similar
8:32
companies they sort of advertise and celebrate, get an investment.
8:36
And for me, I've been around a long time in bio-stimulants and fertilizer,
8:41
and I would never celebrate selling part of my company and get an investment.
8:46
I only celebrate sales and profit because that leads to the building of a sustainable company.
8:54
And so different strategy to the likes of exotic technologies.
8:58
But i can see and that's also why we
9:01
don't go for massive patents but companies like
9:04
cortiva they're probably going to
9:07
patent and they trademark their their products
9:10
because they are building shareholder value and that
9:13
that is just as important to them as profit is and so there are a number of
9:17
other of these big companies that have got patented microbes like syngenta they've
9:22
got their endophytes for nitrogen fixation some years they make a big deal of
9:28
this at trade shows other times you struggle to find them being mentioned depends
9:31
what the emphasis is that year.
9:33
Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, AST. They have a product called BioTango,
9:39
which sounds great, doesn't it? I wonder if it's orange.
9:41
Tango is an orange drink from the UK.
9:43
Again, it's abiotic stress resistance. You will find that most of these,
9:48
even though the microbe might do really well in functioning like heat and drought
9:54
resistance or salt stress or even phosphorus.
9:57
Mobilization they will focus on the nitrogen
10:00
fixation and for one reason only
10:04
really and that's because you get to
10:07
go to say you're a small company and you're.
10:10
Looking for investment from Syngenta or Cortiva or
10:13
you're looking them to buy you if you say you're a nitrogen
10:16
fixing product you can say if we
10:19
took just one percent of the nitrogen market worldwide we'd
10:22
be worth x billion pounds and that
10:26
everyone goes wow this company could be worth x billion pounds
10:29
and so they can have something they can hold they can put
10:31
their coat on and say this company is worth this whereas if
10:35
they said we've got this amazing product and every
10:38
every crop we apply it to has increased heat
10:41
stress tolerance everybody like well what's
10:45
the market value for heat stress tolerance dave i don't.
10:48
Know alan what is the market value for heat stress tolerance oh i
10:51
don't know well there's nothing we can value this then and so
10:54
that's why everyone goes for nitrogen fixation because
10:57
they they know what the nitrogen market is per year and they
11:01
say right if we had one percent of that we'd be worth we'd be
11:03
all billionaires and that's not the case
11:06
often so i used to work for a company that claims to
11:09
have nitrogen fixing bacteria and i
11:12
was like this doesn't fix nitrogen there's no way this product contains nitrogen
11:15
fixing bacteria and my boss at
11:18
the time was a bit of a charlatan he said no
11:20
it has to because that's what the shareholders are expecting so
11:24
a little bit of insight into the dirty world of biostimulants
11:28
and microbial biostimulants there what are the crops and products we've got
11:31
there there are endophytes well it looks like most of them are in grass species
11:36
so either cereals or grazing grass must be that that is the easiest crop to infect,
11:45
shall we say, within endophytes.
11:48
And other species like dicots, there are many that go on to dicots.
11:54
Certainly not seen many crops where endophytes have been promoted for use on
12:01
things like tomatoes, cucumbers, things like that.
12:05
If we're looking at it, it's mainly pasture and arable, possibly because it's
12:10
much more difficult to infect those types of plants with endophytes and they
12:14
are less common in nature.
12:17
Maybe the endophytes are specifically focused on grass. If you're an endophyte
12:21
expert then let me know and I'm happy to.
12:24
Clarification and an update i just did a quick chat gpt search and it's found a number of studies,
12:31
where endophytes are used on tomatoes but not for nitrogen fixation mainly it's
12:37
mainly for antifungal activity showing antagonism where it's not direct action it just keeps the,
12:44
the pathogen from attacking so things like rhizoctonia fusarium botrytis alternaria
12:49
many of the wilts, the rots on tomato crops, and then also on legal cannabis.
12:58
Again, there's a fair amount of research on endophytes from what many would call land races,
13:05
and there's one species
13:09
as well and bacillus friggo frig
13:12
friggo rito friggo rito larans friggo litter rounds and strains c1141 and they're
13:23
from low domestication lines so what we would call wild types or wild strains.
13:30
What that Bacillus frigorito larynx actually does in these strains,
13:39
these low domestication lines of cannabis is unknown.
13:43
So that one is up for research if you are a microbiologist or you study that crop.
13:50
So I think this is a really interesting area of study.
13:53
As I say it's uh it's one where there is a lot of money that's gone into it
13:59
and but not many big products have come out of it some nice products a lot of
14:07
companies like syngenta cortiva like these products because they can.
14:13
There's a nice, warm, fuzzy story around them, an environmental impact of reducing nitrogen use.
14:18
So they can sell that alongside the selling of pesticides.
14:22
And so it's something else to talk about other than buy this bottle of pesticide
14:26
and it will kill weeds or fungus and things like this.
14:28
There's a nice, you know, sort of regenerative agriculture line around it.
14:32
So even if it doesn't make them money, they might invest in it and sell it to
14:36
farmers because it sort of brands them as being the forward-thinking biological company.
14:42
And many of the distributors will will do exactly the
14:45
same whereas somebody like azotic or
14:48
indigo ag or adaptive symbiotic technologies
14:52
they are standalone companies and they have to
14:55
live and die by the endophytes they can sell
14:58
so for them it's much more of a bigger deal and they have
15:01
to produce sales and get distribution and
15:04
get people buying it that's tough even if you have a
15:07
thousand trial data say a thousand trials saying this
15:11
product works amazingly from farm trials from
15:14
independent trials from university trials doesn't mean
15:17
the farm is going to buy it if you said i've been
15:20
to farmers and said this product will will increase your yield by
15:22
20 i went to every commercial greenhouse in
15:25
the country because it controlled mildew organically i says you
15:28
don't need to take your your staff out
15:31
of the greenhouse you don't need to you can spray it
15:34
on right up until the day of harvest they still didn't buy it
15:37
you know you could i could have put all of the the the independent data in front
15:42
of them that doesn't matter if the if a customer doesn't want to buy it because
15:46
they're bored they're not bored but they're they're lazy then it doesn't matter
15:51
so that's the problem a lot of these companies think that the farmers are going to be as.
15:56
Really interested in the technology as they are and
15:59
if they don't get their marketing bang on then they're
16:02
in for a world of pain and that's because endophytes are
16:06
classed as biostimulants and biostimulants are a vitamin
16:09
and not a drug they don't solve problems
16:12
they don't cure diseases they just make the crop
16:15
a bit healthier and a bit stronger they are
16:19
not going to be life
16:22
and death so if a farmer has 100
16:25
pounds to spend per hectare on inputs then
16:29
they're going to go fertiliser and pesticides first and
16:32
if they have any money around they might put it
16:35
in the bank as savings or they might they're feeling flush by
16:38
a biostimulant but definitely not going to be the
16:41
first thing on their shopping list and so that's the
16:43
problem with a lot of these technologies and then the other
16:46
thing about these technologies is do they actually work
16:49
can you actually get them into the crop in the field and with endophytes it's
16:53
a lot harder than it is with a lot of microbials and other biostimulants because
16:57
you have to actually get make sure that the crop absorbs the microbe between
17:02
its cells and plants are often adapted to keep microbes out and.
17:09
Don't want microbes and bacteria going through their stomata and things like
17:13
this. This is the whole point of plants is they're very good at keeping out infection.
17:17
So that's why perhaps there's very, very hit or miss results when it comes to
17:22
trial results with endophytes.
17:24
If you've trialed using endophytes and you've had success or failure or any
17:29
other insights, things I might have missed, things I might have got wrong, then please let me know.
17:33
If you found this episode in any way useful and
17:36
it's not the worst podcast you've ever listened to in the world
17:39
then please could you leave an apple podcast review
17:42
as it would shoot the podcast up the charts and
17:45
make more people listen to podcasts about hydroponics because
17:48
they'll see it higher up in the charts if you're listening to
17:51
us on any any other streaming platform ignore my
17:55
request for a review because it doesn't really matter because it's
17:58
only apple podcast charts that matter apparently but thank
18:01
you very much for listening and if you would like to get
18:05
in contact with me go onto the utreema website if you
18:08
can't spell utreema it is latin for wasabi so
18:11
just google wasabi and then copy the
18:14
utreema from that so wasabi is
18:17
utreema japonica and i just
18:20
like the word utreema i thought it sounded like a good self you know forward-thinking
18:25
agrochemical company's name so that's why i named my company after utreema after
18:30
wasabi and also i love wasabi i like growing it if you you're all probably really
18:36
really bored now so i'm going to say goodbye and i'll see you tomorrow goodbye.