Recently, the Innovation Teams of Evaluation and Utilization of Biological Resources in Coastal Saline-alkali Land, cooperated with Tobacco Functional Components and Biosynthesis from the Institute of Tobacco Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has discovered new sorbicillinoid natural products as herbicide lead compounds, providing molecular templates and target basis for the development of new natural herbicides. The related findings have been published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

In agricultural production, large amounts of chemical herbicides application could lead to environmental pollution and weeds resistance. Development of new microbial natural product herbicides has become a new research hotspot. Compared with bacteria, fungi could produce abundant plant toxins which are major producers of natural herbicidal compounds, thus could be an important source for development of new microbial natural product herbicides.

The study teams obtained a strain of Aspergillus acanthosporus TE-65L, exhibiting significant herbicidal activity against a variety of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous weeds, and chemical investigations resulted in the isolation of five new sorbicillinoid derivatives. The chemical structures of the compounds were determined by spectral analysis and calculations, and their herbicidal activity was reported for the first time. Among them, two compounds could significantly inhibit the germ and radicle elongation of Eleusine indica, and their herbicidal activity was stronger than that of the positive control glyphosate. Further study showed that these compounds could induce lignin biosynthetic pathway, resulting in lignin accumulation and cell wall thickness, and finally inhibited the weeds growth. This study obtained the natural herbicide molecular templates with independent intellectual property rights, expanded the structural types of natural product herbicides, and broadened the agricultural application of sorbicillinoid derivatives.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Qingdao Natural Science Foundation, and the Major Science and Technology Project of China National Tobacco Corporation.

linkage: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.4c06809