NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
Microbial Tracking During Plant Growth Using Fluorescence Reporter Strains This work implemented the microbial seed coating technique to apply a plant beneficial microbe, Burkholderia contaminans (B. contaminans), to a Kennedy Space Center (KSC) tomato variety (Solanum lycopersici) of space crop to assess an ability to mitigate a Fusarium wilt infection (by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (FOL)) of the tomato plant. Fusarium wilt is a common tomato plant pathogenic infection. We pursued this study due that fact that tomatoes are commonly grown in closed environment agriculture settings on Earth and have recently become the subject of space crop science investigations on the ISS. Furthermore, Fusarium oxysporum is a fungal plant pathogen that presented itself on the ISS upon the first tech demo growth experiment of Zinnia flowers suggesting there may be a future potential risk for tomato crops to be similarly affected. For this current study, we strove to evaluate a countermeasure for FOL infection specific to tomato plants, and to understand where the microbes travel throughout the plant so that methods for the proper containment of the introduced microbes could be understood. Here, a fluorescently labeled B. contaminans, Pseudomonas fulva (P. fulva), and Panteoa agglomerans (P. agglomerans) strains were employed to allow for microbial enumeration and visual documentation of the retention for our introduced strain on the host plant using fluorescence-based microscopy. The B. contaminans strain was evaluated for the ability to inhibit FOL and was found effective in a plate-based assay. We observed that B. contaminans applied to the roots could subsequently be found on the shoots of plants at 28 days although in much lower abundance. In addition, we assessed commercially available food grade probiotics known for their benefit to the human gut for their added plant beneficial traits, but we were unable to successfully transform the fluorescence reporter into these gram-positive strains, and none showed inhibition of fungal growth in the plate-based assay. Here we deliver a summary of the effective dosage of B. contaminans that was applied to the tomato seed using the seed film technique and the controlled environment testing of tomato plants over three grow outs that were conducted with a combination of applied seed film, B. contaminans, and FOL to test the effectiveness of the seed coat to counter FOL infection. It was found that the plate-based assay using B. contaminans demonstrated efficacy as an anti-fungal agent; however, the practical application using tomato may have been limited within our sealed vessel growth set up and did not confer any discernable mitigation of FOL infection. Future work could look to optimize growth setting parameters that are more like actual tomato growth conditions in closed environment agriculture to further test for fungal-protective effects, but any effort would still need to account for the proper containment and handling of the FOL organism in KSC labs.
Document ID
20240015476
Acquisition Source
Kennedy Space Center
Document Type
Other - Final Report Summary
Authors
Aubrie O'Rourke
(Kennedy Space Center Merritt Island, Florida, United States)
Jerald Carswell
(Kennedy Space Center Merritt Island, Florida, United States)
Anirudha Dixit
(Aetos Systems Huntsville, Alabama, United States)
Mary Hummerick
(Aetos Systems Huntsville, Alabama, United States)
Aaron Curry
(Engineering Research and Consulting Huntsville, Alabama, United States)
Rachael Atanowski Schaler
(Aetos Systems Huntsville, Alabama, United States)
Rachel Tucker
(Bennett Aerospace (United States) Cary, United States)
Date Acquired
December 3, 2024
Publication Date
February 3, 2025
Subject Category
Life Sciences (General)
Report/Patent Number
CIF 24-2
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 295670
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
Technical Review
NASA Technical Management
Document Inquiry

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available