Introduction

Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica (Thunb.) Lindl.), a unique fruit grown in southern China, is well
known for its rich nutrition, nice taste, and juiciness.
However, loquat fruit can be easily infected by pathogenic fungi due to its thin pericarp, leading
to serious fruit decay and eco-nomic losses, loquat fruit decay is mainly caused by
colletotrichum acutatum
Yeast and bacteria can not only act against pathogens but also secrete active antifungal
substances, some of which are proteins. Alkaline serine protease has biocontrol activity against
fungi. However, there are few studies on proteases for con-trolling postharvest loquat
anthracnose caused by C. acutatum
At present, there are many reports on the heterologous expression of antifungal proteins in
prokaryotic and eukaryotic expres-sion systems, Escherichia coli is the most commonly used
prokaryotic expressions
Our previous study showed that Bacillus amyloliquefaciens MG-3 had significant antifungal
activity due to the fact that it secreted lipopeptides and proteins.
In this study, a novel approach was used to purify, identify the protein MG-3A of B.
amyloliquefaciens and heterologously expressed. The MG-3A was then applied to control
pathogenic fungi in postharvest loquat fruit.