Impact of abiotic stresses on the protection efficacy of defence elicitors and on metabolic regulation in tomato leaves infected by Botrytis cinerea

Abstract

Finding sustainable plant protection strategies is a major challenge for agriculture. Taking advantage of the plant natural immune system by using plant defence elicitors is an interesting avenue to explore. However, transfer to field application is often difficult, mostly due to the complexity of interactions between plants and their environment, involving biotic and abiotic stresses. The protection efficacy against gray mold and the modes of action of potential elicitors were studied on tomato. Modulation of plant defense was studied using both global and targeted metabolic profiling. We identified seven potential elicitors showing good plant protection efficacy and able to trigger the oxylipin pathway, including jasmonic acid production, after inoculation with . Following preliminary assays, seven elicitors including two well-studied elicitors (Bion 50WG® and BABA) showing good plant protection efficacy and low fungitoxic effect were selected to assay the effect of abiotic stresses (wounding, water stress and nitrogen deficiency) on their protection efficacy. Our results showed that the protection efficacy of all products was reduced when plants were exposed to abiotic stresses, suggesting an antagonistic interaction between the tomato responses to abiotic stresses and product treatments. We found that responses to leaf cuttings and product treatments induced metabolic changes in a time-dependent manner, and that both of which mainly activated the oxylipin and JA pathway. However, the negative effects of wounding on tomato protection efficacy of defence elicitors suggest that interplay with other antagonistic signalling pathways is also involved in the tomato responses to this combination of stress.

Mitigation of the Impact of Vascular Wilt and Soil Hypoxia on Cape Gooseberry Plants by Foliar Application of Synthetic Elicitors

“…The use of BE can be considered a promising strategy to help the plant under conditions of abiotic and biotic stress (Ben Salah et al, 2018;Santaniello et al, 2017;Shukla et al, 2017). Maymoune et al (2015) observed that the application of BE of green algae (Ulva sp.) decreased the necrosis diameter, inhibited spore germination, and increased protection efficacy in tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum L.) infected with Botrytis cinerea under water stress conditions.…”

Combination of β-Aminobutyric Acid and Ca2+ Alleviates Chilling Stress in Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.)

“…Tobacco is a cold-sensitive plant, which also serves as a good model to study plant chilling damage. Several studies agree that BABA can alleviate different biological and abiotic stresses including Colletotrichum orbiculare, water stress, gray mold, and Phytophthora infestans, among others (Jeun et al, 2007;Macarisin et al, 2009;Maymoune et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2015;Kuźnicki et al, 2019). However, less information is available about the effect of BABA on plant defense against low temperatures.…”

“…Beta-aminobutyric acid (BABA), widely described as a defense-priming molecule, confers plant resistance to a broad spectrum of biotic and abiotic stresses including microbial pathogens, arthropods, salt, and heat shock (Maymoune et al, 2015;Mostek et al, 2016;Yao et al, 2019). Prior research confirmed that BABA helps soybean to combat Cd stress and barley to resist salt stress.…”