Publications by authors named "Holger Heuer"

Article Synopsis
  • - The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region faces critical challenges in managing plant-parasitic nematodes that negatively impact crop production due to a lack of unified research and diverse approaches.
  • - A review of 30 years of nematode research shows that many nematode species found in the region exceed economic thresholds and are prevalent in soil samples, posing a serious threat to agriculture and the economy.
  • - To effectively manage these nematodes, the text suggests adopting microbial-based products, improving soil practices, and fostering collaboration among researchers and farmers to develop sustainable solutions.
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Nematodes form various associations with soil microbiome. Experimental studies on nematode-attached microbes can improve mechanistic understanding of these associations and lead to new discoveries relevant for the field of nematode biocontrol. Microbial attachment to the surface of phytonematodes is very specific and influenced by a multitude of factors, including the designation of nematodes and microbes, environmental and biological factors in soil, time of incubation, and the ratio and evolutionary trajectories between nematodes and microbes.

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Genes of host plants and parasitic nematodes govern the plant-nematode interaction. The biological receptors and parasitism effectors are variable among plant species and nematode populations, respectively. In the present study, hatch testing and bioassays on cabbage, oilseed radish, and mustard were conducted to compare the biological characteristics among six populations of the beet cyst nematode .

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Apple replant disease is a severe problem in orchards and tree nurseries. Evidence for the involvement of a nematode-microbe disease complex was reported. To search for this complex, plots with a history of apple replanting, and control plots cultivated for the first time with apple were sampled in two fields in two years.

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Harnessing plant-microbe interactions to advance crop resistance to pathogens could be a keystone in sustainable agriculture. The breeding of crops to maximize yield in intensive agriculture might have led to the loss of traits that are necessary for beneficial plant-soil feedback. In this study, we tested whether the soil microbiome can induce a stronger plant defense against root-lesion nematodes in ancestral genotypes of barley than in elite cultivars.

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Root lesion nematodes, , are major pests of legumes with little options for their control. We aimed to prime soybean cv. Primus seedlings to improve basic defense against these nematodes by root application of -3-oxo-tetradecanoyl--homoserine lactone (oxo-C14-HSL).

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Plant-parasitic nematodes are a major constraint on agricultural production. They significantly impede crop yield. To complete their parasitism, they need to locate, disguise, and interact with plant signals exuded in the rhizosphere of the host plant.

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Productivity of sugar beet and brassica vegetable crops is constrained by the nematode worldwide. In sugar beet cropping areas of Central Europe and North America, is managed by crop rotation, and cultivation of resistant brassica cover crops. The recently released nematode-tolerant sugar beet cultivars suffer less damage than susceptible cultivars at high initial population densities of .

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Disease suppressive soils with specific suppression of soil-borne pathogens and parasites have been long studied and are most often of microbiological origin. As for the plant-parasitic nematodes (PPN), which represent a huge threat to agricultural crops and which successfully defy many conventional control methods, soil progression from conducive to suppressive state is accompanied by the enrichment of specific antagonistic microbial consortia. However, a few microbial groups have come to the fore in diminishing PPN in disease suppressive soils using culture-dependent methods.

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Root-knot nematodes ( spp.) are among the most aggressive phytonematodes. While moving through soil to reach the roots of their host, specific microbes attach to the cuticle of the infective second-stage juveniles (J2).

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Early maturing varieties of soybean have a high yield potential in Europe, where the main biotic threat to soybean cultivation are root lesion nematodes (Pratylenchus spp.). Nitrogen fixation in root nodules by highly efficient inoculants of Bradyrhizobium japonicum is an incentive to grow soybean in low-input rotation systems.

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Plant-parasitic nematodes are associated with specifically attached soil bacteria. To investigate these bacteria, we employed culture-dependent methods to isolate a representative set of strains from the cuticle of the infective stage (J2) of the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne hapla in different soils. The bacteria with the highest affinity to attach to J2 belonged to the genera Microbacterium, Sphingopyxis, Brevundimonas, Acinetobacter, and Micrococcus as revealed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

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Apple replant disease (ARD) is a severe problem in apple production worldwide. It is caused by a complex of soil biota, leading to small discolorated roots, as well as increased biosynthesis of phytoalexins, total phenolic compounds and antioxidants. We sampled soil from randomized field plots with either apple trees affected by ARD, which were five times replanted every second year, or with healthy trees growing in plots, which had a grass cover during this period.

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Plant health is strongly influenced by the interactions between parasites/pathogens and beneficial microorganisms. In this chapter we will summarize the up-to date knowledge on soil suppressiveness as a biological tool against phytonematodes and explore the nature of monoculture versus crop rotation in this regard. Since nematodes are successfully antagonized by different microbiological agents, we highlighted this phenomenon with respect to the most important antagonists, and a nature of these interactions.

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Plant-parasitic nematodes cause considerable damage to crop plants. The rhizosphere microbiome can affect invasion and reproductive success of plant-parasitic nematodes, thus affecting plant damage. In this study, we investigated how the transplanted rhizosphere microbiome from different crops affect plant-parasitic nematodes on soybean or tomato, and whether the plant's own microbiome from the rhizosphere protects it better than the microbiome from fallow soil.

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Populations of beet cyst nematodes vary in aggressiveness and virulence toward sugar beet varieties, but also in traits like host range, or decline rate in the field. Diversity of their essential pathogenicity gene is shaped by diversifying selection and gene flow. The authors developed a technique to study inter-population variation and intra-population diversity and dynamics of based on the gene .

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A biopurification system (BPS) is used on-farm to clean pesticide-contaminated wastewater. Due to high pesticide loads, a BPS represents a hot spot for the proliferation and selection as well as the genetic adaptation of discrete pesticide degrading microorganisms. However, while considerable knowledge exists on the biodegradation of specific pesticides in BPSs, the bacterial community composition of these systems has hardly been explored.

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Endoparasitic root-knot (Meloidogyne spp.) and lesion (Pratylenchus spp.) nematodes cause considerable damage in agriculture.

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A statistical method was developed to test for equivalence of microbial communities analysed by next-generation sequencing of amplicons. The test uses Bray-Curtis distances between the microbial community structures and is based on a two-sample jackknife procedure. This approach was applied to investigate putative effects of the antifungal biocontrol strain RU47 on fungal communities in three arable soils which were analysed by high-throughput ITS amplicon sequencing.

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Article Synopsis
  • Dairy farm manure contains tetracycline resistance genes, specifically focusing on conjugative plasmids that can transfer this resistance to soil.
  • Researchers isolated plasmids from cattle feces using chlortetracycline and identified the LowGC-type plasmid pFK2-7, which carries genes for resistance to tetracycline (tet(Y)) and streptomycin (strA-strB).
  • There is a correlation between the abundance of LowGC plasmids and tetracycline resistance genes in manure and soil, suggesting these plasmids play a role in the environmental spread of antibiotic resistance.
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Naturally occurring drying-rewetting events in soil have been shown to affect the dissipation of veterinary antibiotics entering soil by manure fertilization. However, knowledge of effects on the soil microbial community structure and resistome is scarce. Here, consequences of drying-rewetting cycles on effects of sulfadiazine (SDZ) in soil planted with Dactylis glomerata L.

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Globodera spp. are under strict quarantine in many countries. Suppressiveness to cyst nematodes can evolve under monoculture of susceptible hosts.

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On-farm biopurification systems (BPSs) treat pesticide-contaminated wastewater at farms through biodegradation and sorption processes. However, information on the microbiota involved in pesticide removal in BPSs is scarce. Here we report on the response of BPS bacterial communities to the herbicide linuron (BPS(+)) compared with the control (BPS(-)) in a microcosm experiment.

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We report the draft genome sequence of Pseudomonas sp. nov. H2, isolated from creek sediment in Moscow, ID, USA.

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Effectors of root-knot nematodes are essential for parasitism and prone to recognition by adapted variants of the host plants. This selective pressure initiates hypervariability of effector genes. Diversity of the gene variants within nematode populations might correlate with host preferences.

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