Fungicide sprays help drug-resistant bacteria spread inside tomato plants
Zheng C, Song J, Shan M, Zhang H, Qiu M
Soil Health
The tomato plants you spray for blight in your backyard could be quietly breeding bacteria that shrug off antibiotics, then moving those bacteria up into the fruit you eat.
Scientists found that spraying tomato plants with fungicide does more than fight fungus, it also changes the bacteria living in and on the plant. Some of these bacteria carry genes that make them resistant to antibiotics, and the fungicide seems to help those genes travel further up the plant and jump between different bacteria more easily. The plant's own root chemistry shifts under fungicide stress in a way that makes this gene-swapping even more likely, so a routine garden treatment can end up encouraging tougher, drug-resistant germs.
Key Findings
Ecological risk of resistance genes in above-ground tomato tissue rose 1.29 to 123.49-fold under fungicide exposure compared to untreated controls
Fungicide stress promoted upward migration of resistant ESKAPE pathogen bacteria and increased horizontal gene transfer (gene swapping) between them
Fungicides triggered changes in root flavonoid chemistry that physically enhanced conditions favoring gene transfer among bacteria
chevron_right Technical Summary
Fungicides sprayed on tomato plants don't just kill fungus, they also push antibiotic-resistant bacteria to spread further up the plant and swap resistance genes with each other, raising the risk that drug-resistant pathogens end up in the food chain.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Bridging ecological processes to elevated antibiotic resistance risk in tomato microbiome under fungicide stress.
From a "One Health" perspective, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) harbored by the plant microbiome pose a significant threat to public health, yet their ecological mechanisms under fungicide stre...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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