AI empowers farmers to battle bacterial crop disease

AI-Driven Gene Editing Boosts Crop Resilience

Background: Growing Crop Challenges

• Farmers in China are turning to late‑autumn crops such as sweet potatoes to counter damage already observed.
• USDA photographs capture the severity of these losses.

Artificial Intelligence Tools in Plant Immunity

Scientists are employing AI to rewire plant immune systems. By genetically manipulating key receptors, they can enhance how vegetables like tomatoes and potatoes recognize and defend against bacterial threats.

Key Receptor: FLS2 and Bacterial Evasion

• FLS2, an immune receptor, detects flagellin, a protein in bacterial tails that propel movement.
• Bacteria continually evolve, altering flagellin amino acids to dodge detection—an ongoing arms race.

Experimental Results: Dual Gains

Through a series of experiments, researchers found that reengineering plant receptors not only recognizes bacterial threats but also boosts resistance. This dual effect prepares crops against microbial attacks and paves the way for more resilient agriculture.

Future Outlook: Towards Resilient Agriculture

Lead scientist Gitta Coaker, professor of Plant Pathology, emphasizes that by exploiting AI and gene editing, the agricultural sector can transform vulnerable crops into robust, disease‑resistant staples.

The battle against bacterial wilt: Ralstonia solanacearum

Plants usually fall victim to the soil‑borne bacterium Ralstonia solanacearum when it breaches a wound. The pathogen flags an array of over 200 hosts, among them tomato, potato, pepper, eggplant and tobacco.

Key facts about the pathogen

• It is an aerobic, Gram‑negative bacterium that does not form spores.
• Motile and soil‑borne, it colonises plant xylem, the conduit of water and nutrients.
• In tobacco, the disease is called Granville wilt; in other hosts it causes a classic bacterial wilt.

Coaker’s team reactivates the plant immune system

Using natural genetic variation together with AlphaFold, an AI tool that predicts protein 3D shapes, the researchers reengineered the plant receptor FLS2. By upgrading its immune system, the receptor can now detect a wider spectrum of bacterial intruders.

How the receptor was refined

• The group started with receptors that already recognized multiple bacteria, even if they were absent in major crops.
• Comparing these broad‑scope receptors with more narrowly targeted ones revealed which amino acids to modify.
• The result is a resurrected receptor that gives the plant a precise chance to resist infection, restoring a defense that the pathogen had previously undermined.

Coaker comments: “We resurrected a defeated receptor, enabling the plant to resist pathogen infection in a highly targeted, precise way.”

Published research

The study, titled “Unlocking expanded flagellin perception through rational receptor engineering.” appears in Nature Plants.