The influence of uv protectants on the bacteriophage ability to suppress fire blight development in the plants tissues

Bacteriophages are considered to play an important role in the fire blight management as the natural habitants of the pome orchards and highly specific bacterial parasites. The main problem of the phage therapy application against fire blight is the necessity to suppress the pathogen development in the phyllosphere were they are easily inactivated by unfavorable environmental factors such as changes of temperature, pH and sunlight irradiation. UV irradiation is critical for bacteriophages and serious efforts are being made for to find effective and economically acceptable UV protectants of the bacterial viruses' particles. In this study it has been shown that casein, soy peptone and carrot juice protected bacteriophages from the UV irradiation damage and phages were able to suppress development of the fire blight causative agent in plant tissues.