Agricultural production systems can serve as reservoir for human pathogens.

Food-borne diseases are a threat to human health and can cause severe economic losses. Nowadays, in a growing and increasingly interconnected world, food-borne diseases need to be dealt with in a global manner. In order to tackle this issue it is essential to consider all possible entry routes of human pathogens into the production chain. Beside the post harvest handling of the fresh produce itself also the prevention of contaminations in livestock and agricultural soils is of particular importance. While the monitoring of human pathogens and intervening measures are relatively easy to apply in livestock and post harvest, the investigation of thus the prevention strategies in crop fields is a challenging task. Furthermore, crop fields are interconnected with livestock via fertilizers and feed therefore, a poor hygiene management can cause cross contaminations. In this review, we highlight the possible contamination of crop plants by bacterial human pathogens via the rhizosphere, their interaction with the plant and possible intervention strategies. Furthermore, we discuss critical issues and still open questions. © FEMS 2020.