Secondary metabolites produced by Trichoderma and their importance in the biocontrol process

Abstract

[EN]Trichoderma species are filamentous fungi with high economic importance since they participate as biocontrol or biological pesticide agents, inhibiting the growth of phytopathogenic fungi that could destroy a large variety of crops. The biocontrol ability of Trichoderma seems to be due to multiple factors, as they have the ability to produce a variety of extracellular lytic enzymes and the production of many secondary metabolites. Three kinds of compounds are mainly produced by different species of Trichoderma: peptaibols, polyketides and terpenes, some of them with antifungal activity. There exist many reports about their chemical structure and, in some cases, the complete biosynthetic pathway has been elucidated thanks to the isolation and detection of many intermediate compounds. However, nothing or little information exists about the genes involved in their biosynthesis, mainly because each individual strain of Trichoderma has the ability to produce simultaneously large quantities of these kinds of compounds, which make difficult to relate one gene with one intermediate or final product.