Plants: Heritable Disease Resistance

Priming, a new method of eliciting defense against pests was explored in a research study in the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, published in the journal Plant Physiology. "We apply treatments to plants in order to increase their natural ability to stimulate their own defenses against pathogenic organisms, a well known method among specialists called priming, explains Brigitte Mauch-Mani, research director in the Laboratory of cell and molecular biology at the University of Neuchâtel.

In a priming experiment using Arabidopsis thaliana, the research group compared the plants' response against an insect and a pathogenic bacterium after priming with β-amino-butyric acid (BABA), an avirulent isolate of bacteria from the genus Pseudomonas, and with tap water. Results showed that progenies of the primed plants defended themselves faster and better against the insect and the bacteria.

A similar study published in the journal, using methyl jasmonate as the priming agent, was effective against herbivorous insects. Priming using defense elicitors could be a very promising strategy for sustainable agriculture.

The news article in French can be seen at http://www2.unine.ch/nccr/page-24288_fr.html