Regulating temperature and humidity inhibits the disease severity of tomato

Abstract

The environment significantly impacts the interactions between plants and pathogens, thus remarkably affecting crop disease occurrence. Regulating the environmental conditions in greenhouses to inhibit plant diseases is conducive to the development of green ecological agriculture. However, how to specific regulate the temperature and humidity to reduce plant diseases remain unclear. In this study, different methods of temperature and humidity regulation were performed. Histological observation and dual RNA-seq analysis showed that increasing temperature and decreasing humidity at 24 h post inoculation (hpi) for 12 h could effectively inhibit disease severity of tomatoes. The regulation induced the expression of heat shock proteins (HSPs) and defense-related genes of tomatoes in response to B. cinerea. Bcl-2-associated athanogenes (BAGs) may be involved in tomato resistance to B. cinerea mediated by temperature and humidity regulation. In addition, the infection process and the expression of toxin-related genes of B. cinerea such as sesquiterpene botrydial (BOT) and polyketide botcinic acid (BOA) was inhibited. Overall, we obtained the optimal regulation method of temperature and humidity to alleviate tomato gray mold, and preliminarily explored its mechanisms of inhibiting the disease.