Interplay between abiotic (drought) and biotic (virus) stresses in tomato plants

Abstract

Environmental stresses affect agricultural production worldwide, leading to yield reductions of many crops. Drought and heat are the most serious abiotic stresses, especially in countries with hot climates. Drought, together with heat, usually stimulates plant pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects. Interactions between the plant environment and pathogens modulate the plant defence responses (Prasch & Sonnewald, 2013), either weakening or enhancing them (Atkinson & Urwin, 2012).An increasing research body indicates that plant viruses modulate host responses to changes in their environment such as wounding, elevated salinity, high temperature, and atmospheric CO 2 . These changes are accompanied by alterations in the virus biology such as titre, virulence, and transmission efficiency (Bergès et al., 2020;van Munster et al., 2017).Abiotic stresses may affect the life cycle of viruses as well as the interactions between host susceptibility factors and viruses.Conversely, viruses can influence the plant response to abiotic stresses. For example, turnip mosaic virus (TuMV)-infected plants display an enhanced expression of defence genes, which is abolished in those plants exposed to abiotic stresses. Deactivation of defence responses leads to a higher susceptibility of plants to virus (Prasch & Sonnewald, 2013). Abiotic stress sensing through the Ca 2+

Exploiting Virus Infection to Protect Plants from Abiotic Stresses: Tomato Protection by a Begomovirus

“…The ability of TYLCV, particularly of its C4 protein, to promote enhanced tolerance to drought was reported in tomato and in N. benthamiana ; however, a mechanism explaining this phenomenon was not proposed [ 13 ]. Indeed, TYLCV-infected tomatoes survived after 25–30 days of growth after water withhold, compared to approximately two weeks for uninfected tomatoes [ 39 ]. The observed resilience of virus-infected plants to drought was accompanied by a reallocation of key metabolites, from shoots to roots ( Figure 3 ).…”

“…Drought causes a decrease in essential free sugars and amino acids in shoots, concomitant to an increase in these metabolites in roots [ 40 ]. The reallocation of carbohydrates and amino acids from shoots to roots suggests a role of roots in protecting infected tomatoes against drought [ 39 ].…”

“…In response to drought, similarly to the response to heat, the presence of TYLCV in plants caused a down-regulation of stress response proteins, including HSP90 and HSP70 [ 39 ]. Moreover, the expression of three key HSFs ( HsfA1 , HsfA2 , HsfB1 ) was less induced by drought in infected than in uninfected plants ( Figure 3 ).…”

Actinidia seed-borne latent virus (ASbLV, Betaflexiviridae) is transmitted paternally and maternally at high rates

“…There was no significant difference in transmission frequency of ASbLV to different seedling tissues in the case of the one infected paternal parent crossing ('X84', Table 1) where this was investigated (deviance = 0.1, 2 df, P = 0.967). they can confer tolerance to drought or freezing temperatures in several different crops (Roossinck 2011;Mishra et al 2022). Specific research is required to understand the ASbLV-Actinidia interaction including ASbLV movement and whether it confers benefit under a range of biotic and abiotic conditions.…”

The C4 protein of tomato yellow leaf curl Sardinia virus primes drought tolerance in tomato through morphological adjustments

“…In the context of drought-induced responses, transcriptome analyses showed that TYLCSV infection boosts the expression of ABA biosynthetic genes, supporting the increase in ABA levels in virus-infected tissues [ 31 ]. More recently, Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), a relative of TYLCSV, was reported to mitigate the response of tomato plants to heat stress [ 32 ] and to increase drought tolerance in Nicotiana benthamiana and tomato [ 33 – 35 ]. The study by [ 33 ] also advanced that the TYLCV-encoded C4 protein is the viral determinant conferring such features in Arabidopsis , in an ABA-independent manner.…”