Explain how you would implement your project in the real world.
One of the challenging things about Pseudomonas syringae in agriculture is that there are often many strains present in a given field or orchard each with different phage specialized to its predation making it difficult to use just one product. Additionally, Pseudomonas strikes most often in the spring when the snow melts by using the relative low pressure within the leaf to be sucked into the tissue. P. syringae can lie dormant within frozen plant tissue all winter before becoming active again and infecting healthy tissue from within.
When reaching out to the farming community the biggest challenge we expected to face was selling them on the idea of GMO viruses; we didn't expect that their main concern would actually be cost. This includes whether or not our product would be replacing conventional methods, how often it would need to be sprayed, and the labor cost of application as all of these things add costs.
While the exact method isn't yet clear, we have a broad idea as to how our project would be implimented by farmers. Our environmental phages, as well as several commercial phages would be given Spytag modifications and mixed with Spycatcher GFP or whichever spycatcher molecule ends up providing the best UV resistance. This mixed phage spray would be applied to leaves during the times of year infection is most prevalent as well as onto any infected areas to clear the blight. While farmers would be able to spray additional antibiotics without harming the phage, this increases the overall cost of application. The mix of phages would broaden host range, and our spytag modification could be added to any additional environmental phages found to target new strains of Pseudomonad bacteria. An issue with our method is that additional spycatcher proteins would need to be added to the mix as our phage divides without replicating the surface coat. This issue could be removed with future work to add the Spycatcher attached molecule directly to the major capsid protein with a flexible linker, however for the time being the spycatcher spytag method allows for a variety of surface decorating molecules to be used and tested in the field by farmers.