Fig. 5.

Experimental validation of the effects of ‘secondary phages’ on pathogen abundances and bacterial wilt disease incidence. a–c Examples of colony and plaque morphologies of three ‘inhibitor bacteria’ and ‘inhibitor-associated phages’. d–f The effect of three ‘inhibitor bacteria’ and ‘inhibitor-associated phages’ on R. solanacearum density (red fluorescence intensity (RFI)) in all possible combinations, n = 8 for all treatments. g–l The effect of three ‘inhibitor bacteria’ on bacterial wilt disease incidence (g–i, n = 5 for all treatments) and pathogen density (j–l, n = 6 for all treatments) when applied alone or co-inoculated with ‘inhibitor-associated phages’ during tomato greenhouse experiments. In d–l, dashed lines and shading indicate the mean and standard deviation of pathogen-only control treatments, respectively, and statistical significances between treatments were determined by one-way ANOVA where *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. n.s., non-significant (see Additional file 2: Tables S8–S11 for details; all error bars show standard deviation)