A five-member synthetic bacterial community built from ginseng-associated biocontrol strains to suppress Ilyonectria robusta rusty root rot while promoting Panax ginseng growth. Tian et al. screened 98 consortia built from ten isolates and identified CL95, a 1:1 mixture of Bacillus velezensis NJ13, Bacillus velezensis NT35, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FG14, Pseudomonas chlororaphis TU26, and Pseudomonas thivervalensis JI6, as the most effective field treatment, with 66.67% rusty-root-rot control efficacy.
Taxonomy
| Taxon | Ontology ID | Functional Roles | Abundance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bacillus velezensis NJ13 — ontology label: Bacillus velezensis | NCBITaxon:492670 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
PATHOGEN_ANTAGONIST
|
DOMINANT |
|
|||
| Bacillus velezensis NT35 — ontology label: Bacillus velezensis | NCBITaxon:492670 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
PATHOGEN_ANTAGONIST
|
DOMINANT |
|
|||
| Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FG14 — ontology label: Bacillus amyloliquefaciens | NCBITaxon:1390 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
PATHOGEN_ANTAGONIST
|
DOMINANT |
|
|||
| Pseudomonas chlororaphis TU26 — ontology label: Pseudomonas chlororaphis | NCBITaxon:587753 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
PATHOGEN_ANTAGONIST
|
DOMINANT |
|
|||
| Pseudomonas thivervalensis JI6 — ontology label: Pseudomonas thivervalensis | NCBITaxon:86265 · TaxonMech · TraitMech |
PATHOGEN_ANTAGONIST
|
DOMINANT |
|
|||
Ecological Interactions
The graph shows only explicitly linked interaction participants. Community members without an asserted participant link are omitted; membership alone does not imply an interaction.
CL95 Ilyonectria robusta suppression
CL95 inhibited Ilyonectria robusta in plate and wounded-ginseng-root assays and had the highest reported field rusty-root-rot control efficacy among the tested treatments, 66.67%. Plate colony-growth inhibition was 73%; that endpoint is distinct from disease control. These experiments support whole-consortium antagonistic capacity and field disease suppression, not a selectively established resource-competition mechanism or a causal attribution to any one member. Fungal qPCR measures DNA abundance, not necessarily viable pathogen numbers. Plant growth improved under the same field treatment, but suppression was not selectively manipulated to establish it as the mediator of growth.
Participating Taxa: Bacillus velezensis NJ13, Bacillus velezensis NT35, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FG14, Pseudomonas chlororaphis TU26, Pseudomonas thivervalensis JI6, Ilyonectria robusta
Biological Processes:
- biological process involved in interspecies interaction between organisms (GO:0044419 · PathwayMech)
Evidence
-
PMID:42305112 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"the five-strain consortia CL95 and CL94 showed substantial inhibition rates of 73%"
-
PMID:42305112 - SUPPORT (IN_VIVO)"Six consortia exhibited control efficacy exceeding 50%, with CL95 showing the highest efficacy at 66.67%, followed closely by CL92 at 62.96%."
CL95 plant growth promotion
CL95 was among six selected field treatments that reduced disease and increased ginseng growth. Separate plate screens reported nitrogen-fixation, phosphate-solubilization and potassium-release zone phenotypes; Table S5 lists CL95 zones of 13.00, 15.50 and 19.00 mm, respectively. Those screens are functional proxies, not measurements of nutrient flux into the plant or proof that any one plate phenotype mediates the field response. Improved host growth and higher consortium performance do not by themselves establish reciprocal fitness benefits for the host and all five bacterial strains.
Participating Taxa: Bacillus velezensis NJ13, Bacillus velezensis NT35, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FG14, Pseudomonas chlororaphis TU26, Pseudomonas thivervalensis JI6, Panax ginseng
Biological Processes:
- plant growth (GO:0040007 · PathwayMech)
Evidence
-
PMID:42305112 - SUPPORT (IN_VIVO)"These selected consortia demonstrated dual functionality, effectively suppressing rusty root rot while simultaneously promoting ginseng growth"
-
PMID:42305112 - SUPPORT (IN_VITRO)"NJ13+NT35+FG14+TU26+JI6 CL95 13.00±0.253e 15.50±0.133c 19.00±0.431d"
CL95 colonization and rhizosphere enzyme response
Antibiotic-selection colony counts support recovery of labeled bacteria from ginseng tissues and rhizosphere soil after CL95 treatment over the 63-day experiment, with higher recovery than single-strain treatments. The Methods name labeled NJ13, NT35 and FG14 strains mixed with unlabeled partners; these counts do not independently track all five CL95 members or show that every member benefits. Tissue-specific time courses motivate the authors' proposed upward-migration trajectory but do not directly track individual cells moving between tissues. Separately, CL95 treatment increased measured rhizosphere phosphatase, sucrase, catalase and urease activities during root expansion. These soil activities do not identify their producing organism or establish a colonization-to-enzyme-to-growth causal chain, reciprocal mutualism or a specific biofilm mechanism.
Participating Taxa: Bacillus velezensis NJ13, Bacillus velezensis NT35, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FG14, Pseudomonas chlororaphis TU26, Pseudomonas thivervalensis JI6, Panax ginseng
Biological Processes:
- biological process involved in interspecies interaction between organisms (GO:0044419 · PathwayMech)
Evidence
-
PMID:42305112 - SUPPORT (IN_VIVO)"the biocontrol bacteria CL95 showed excellent colonization efficiency, which was significantly better than single strain treatment"
-
PMID:42305112 - SUPPORT (IN_VIVO)"Compared with the single strain CL1, the soil phosphatase activity of CL95 treatment increased by 100%, the sucrase activity increased by 140%, the catalase activity increased by 180%, and the urease activity increased by 150%."
Knowledge gaps & discussions (1)
KNOWLEDGE_GAP OPEN Which CL95 member strains and secreted metabolites directly suppress Ilyonectria robusta or drive the measured ginseng growth-promotion and rhizosphere enzyme phenotypes?
Tian et al. 2026 connected CL95 to strong pathogen suppression, plant growth promotion, tissue/rhizosphere colonization, and soil-enzyme responses, but did not assign the community phenotypes to a specific member or molecule. Plate antagonism does not isolate resource competition, and improved host growth does not measure reciprocal bacterial fitness. Selective-CFU recovery, plate nutrient-screen zones, soil enzyme activities, defense-gene expression and amplicon correlations were measured in distinct assays; they do not selectively establish a colonization, nutrient-flux, induced-systemic-resistance or microbiome-recruitment mediation chain. In particular, defense transcription is positive host-response evidence, not a pathway-blockade test of necessity. The suppression-to-growth arrow is removed because it encodes joint treatment outcomes rather than isolated mediation. Resolve strain-specific marker readout, relevant perturbations and the abstract/main-text soil-enzyme percentage discrepancy before assigning exact member effects or new causal branches.
Attaches to: ecological_interactions#CL95 Ilyonectria robusta suppression, ecological_interactions#CL95 plant growth promotion, ecological_interactions#CL95 colonization and rhizosphere enzyme response
External Resources
| Name | Repository | Resource ID |
|---|---|---|
|
Primary publication - Ginseng CL95 rusty-root-rot biocontrol SynCom
Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology 2026 open-access primary article, doi:10.1016/j.synbio.2026.04.003, describing CL95 construction, Ilyonectria robusta inhibition, field rusty-root-rot control, ginseng growth promotion, and plant/soil colonization. |
OTHER | PMID:42305112 |
|
||
Environmental Factors
| Factor | Value | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Baixi ginseng rusty-root-rot field plots | 2031.64 | fg/uL Ilyonectria robusta DNA in soil |
|
||
Growth Media
Cross-Mech Suite Links
Explore related entities across the CultureBotAI X-Mech knowledge bases: