Biological control mitigates spread of vector-borne plant pathogens

Abstract

Diseases caused by vector-borne plant pathogens cause adverse impacts on yield resilience, food security, and farmer livelihoods, which are bound to aggravate under global change. Biological control is routinely discounted as a mitigation strategy for plant diseases, partially due to scarce and inconclusive empirical support. Here, using curated field survey data for 58 persistently or semi-persistently transmitted pathogens, we employ a multi-method approach to assess the role of resident (i.e., naturally occurring) biological control agents in these pathosystems. Our meta-analyses show how in planta pathogen incidence is strongly affected by vector abundance and infectivity. Meanwhile, biological control agent density negatively affects vector abundance and slows vector population build-up. Together, these relationships suggest that biological control lessens pathogen incidence by reducing vector abundance, though a paucity of data impedes direct, empirical demonstration of this effect. In particular, bipartite (mainly vector × pathogen) interactions have only been uncovered under field conditions for less than half of focal pathosystems. More so, just 5 % of studies simultaneously reported pathogen, vector, and biological control agent densities. Our study contests the long-standing dogma that arthropod-vectored pathogens cannot be mitigated through biological control, and accentuates how observational or manipulative field studies are imperative to grasp its full potential.