The consequences of antibiotic use in horticulture

The problem of antibiotic resistance emerging from the use and misuse of antibiotics in veterinary practice was considered as long ago as the 1960s by the famous Swann Committee. What seems to be less well understood, and certainly less well documented, is the use of antimicrobials in the world of plant science. Antibiotics have been widely used in the control of contamination of micropropagation and plant tissue culture for 40 years or so and for a similar length of time in the topical treatment of bacterial diseases of fruit trees. It is probably time to bring this to the attention of medical microbiologists.