Antagonistic fungi such as Trichoderma reesei are promising alternatives to conventional fungicides in agriculture. This is especially true for worldwide occurring grapevine trunk diseases, causing losses of US$1.5 billion every year, at which conventional fungicides are mostly ineffective or prohibited by law. Yet, applications of Trichoderma against grapevine trunk diseases are limited to preventive measures, suffer from poor shelf life, or uncontrolled germination. Therefore, we developed a mild and spore-compatible layer-by-layer assembly to encapsulate spores of a new mycoparasitic strain of T. reesei IBWF 034-05 in a bio-based and biodegradable lignin shell. The encapsulation inhibits undesired premature germination and enables the application as an aqueous dispersion via trunk injection. First injected into a plant, the spores remain in a resting state. Second, when lignin-degrading fungi infect the plant, enzymatic degradation of the shell occurs and germination is selectively triggered by the pathogenic fungi itself, which was proven in vitro. Germinated Trichoderma antagonizes the fungal pathogens and finally supplants them from the plant. This concept enables Trichoderma spores for curative treatment of esca, one of the most infective grapevine trunk diseases worldwide.

里氏木霉等拮抗真菌是农业中传统杀菌剂的有前景的替代品。尤其是世界范围内发生的葡萄树干病害，每年造成15亿美元的损失，而传统杀菌剂大多无效或被法律禁止。然而，木霉菌针对葡萄树干病害的应用仅限于预防措施，其保质期较短或发芽不受控制。因此，我们开发了一种温和且与孢子相容的逐层组件，将里氏木霉IBWF 034-05 的新真菌寄生菌株的孢子封装在生物基和可生物降解的木质素壳中。封装可抑制不良的过早发芽，并可通过树干注射作为水分散体应用。首次注入植物时，孢子保持静止状态。其次，当木质素降解真菌感染植物时，病原真菌本身会选择性地引发外壳的酶促降解并发芽，这在体外得到了证实。发芽的木霉对抗真菌病原体并最终将它们从植物中取代。这一概念使木霉孢子能够治愈埃斯卡病，埃斯卡病是世界上最具传染性的葡萄树干疾病之一。