AtNPR1-expressing Cotton Lines Show Resistance to Black Root Rot

The soil-borne pathogen Thielaviopsis basicola causes black root rot disease in several crops including cotton. Infected plants exhibit dark brown or black discoloration caused by severe rotting of the roots, which further hampers growth and production. Thus, Vinod Kumar from Texas A&M University and colleagues conducted a study to analyze the effect of T. basicola to Arabidopsis NPR (AtNPR1)-expressing cotton lines, which has high resistance to several pathogens.

Kumar and team reported that the AtNPR1-expressing cotton lines exhibited significant degree of tolerance to black root rot. The transgenic plants exhibited black discoloration symptoms similar with the control plants, but the transgenic plants recovered faster and resumed normal growth. The transgenic plants also had higher shoot and root mass, longer shoot length, and greater number of boll-set.

Further analysis revealed that the roots of the transgenic plants had stronger and faster induction of several defense-related genes such as PR1, thaumatin, glucanase, LOX1, and chitinase. These findings affirmed that overexpression of AtNPR1 gene in cotton provides broad-spectrum resistance to pests.

Read the abstract at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11248-012-9652-9.