Diagnostic kit for rice blight resistance.

Blight-resistant rice lines are the most effective solution for bacterial blight, caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo). Key resistance mechanisms involve SWEET genes as susceptibility factors.

Acyl Sugars Protect a Wild Tobacco from Both Native Fungal Pathogens and a Specialist Herbivore.

-Acyl sugars (-AS) are abundant trichome-specific metabolites that function as indirect defenses against herbivores of the wild tobacco ; whether they also function as generalized direct defenses against herbivores and pathogens remains unknown. We characterized natural variation in AS among 26 accessions and examined their influence on two native fungal pathogens, U4 and sp. U10, and the specialist herbivore At least 15 different AS structures belonging to three classes were found in leaves.

Specificity of root microbiomes in native-grown Nicotiana attenuata and plant responses to UVB increase Deinococcus colonization.

Plants recruit microbial communities from the soil in which they germinate. Our understanding of the recruitment process and the factors affecting it is still limited for most microbial taxa. We analysed several factors potentially affecting root microbiome structure - the importance of geographic location of natural populations, the microbiome of native seeds as putative source of colonization and the effect of a plant's response to UVB exposure on root colonization of highly abundant species.

Native root-associated bacteria rescue a plant from a sudden-wilt disease that emerged during continuous cropping.

Plants maintain microbial associations whose functions remain largely unknown. For the past 15 y, we have planted the annual postfire tobacco Nicotiana attenuata into an experimental field plot in the plant's native habitat, and for the last 8 y the number of plants dying from a sudden wilt disease has increased, leading to crop failure. Inadvertently we had recapitulated the common agricultural dilemma of pathogen buildup associated with continuous cropping for this native plant.

Jasmonic acid signalling mediates resistance of the wild tobacco Nicotiana attenuata to its native Fusarium, but not Alternaria, fungal pathogens.

We recently characterized a highly dynamic fungal disease outbreak in native populations of Nicotiana attenuata in the southwestern United States. Here, we explore how phytohormone signalling contributes to the observed disease dynamics. Single inoculation with three native Fusarium and Alternaria fungal pathogens, isolated from diseased plants growing in native populations, resulted in disease symptoms characteristic for each pathogen species.

Isolating fungal pathogens from a dynamic disease outbreak in a native plant population to establish plant-pathogen bioassays for the ecological model plant Nicotiana attenuata.

The wild tobacco species Nicotiana attenuata has been intensively used as a model plant to study its interaction with insect herbivores and pollinators in nature, however very little is known about its native pathogen community. We describe a fungal disease outbreak in a native N. attenuata population comprising 873 plants growing in an area of about 1500 m2.