Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology, cilt.142, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Fire blight, caused by Erwinia amylovora , is a destructive disease resulting in significant economic losses and food waste worldwide. Current control strategies are often limited in efficacy, rely on harmful chemicals, and contribute to the emergence antibiotic resistance. Therefore, sustainable and effective alternatives are urgently needed. Among these, bacteriophages offered many advantages such as high specificity to host bacteria and minimal environmental impact, represent a promising biocontrol approach against to fire blight and the usage of local bacteria for phage isolation influences the success of such treatment. In this study, two phages named as EAP2 and EAP4 were isolated from Türkiye and characterized for their potential use in targeted, field-specific management of fire blight. While the genome sizes of these phages were found to be 85.7 and 86.2 kb, the contigs were 11,199 and 10,495, respectively. Morphological analysis revealed that both phages possess a large icosahedral head connected to a long tail. Additionally, their latent periods were 30 min, and the burst sizes were calculated as 66.7 and 100.0 PFU per infected cell for EAP2 and EAP4, respectively. Efficacy assays demonstrated that both phages significantly reduced E. amylovora populations at multiplicities of infection (MOI) ranging from 0.1 to 10. At an MOI of 0.1, bacterial counts decreased by 1.57 log units with EAP2, whereas at an MOI of 10, a 1.16 log unit reduction was observed with EAP4. Overall, these results highlight the strong potential of locally isolated bacteriophages as effective and sustainable biocontrol agents for managing fire blight in region-specific agricultural systems.