Without antibiotic application, fire blight can strick orchards.

Antibiotic applications are now integrated into many standard agricultural protocols.  Although most of that application is associated with raising livestock, there are some crops that are treated with anitbiotics as well — primarily streptomycin being applied to tree fruits and nursery plants. The concern is that these practices might be contributing to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains.  Researchers collected leaves from orchards where streptomycin had been prophylactically applied and where it had never been applied.  They sonicated the leaves with ultrasonic cleaning exposure to collect bacteria.

You can read about their results at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

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