BIOTIC STRESS IN

PLANTS
By sahil chaudhary, Bsc.Biotechnology, sem 5,17004
Stress
◦ 'Stress' in plants can be defined as any external factor that negatively influences plant growth,
productivity, reproductive capacity or survival.
◦ Stress is of two types:1)biotic
2)abiotic
Biotic STRESS
◦ Biotic stress is stress that occurs as a result of damage done to an organism by other living organisms,
such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, beneficial and harmful insects, weeds, and cultivated or native
plants.
◦ It is different from abiotic stress, which is the negative impact of non-living factors on the organisms
such as temperature, sunlight, wind, salinity, flooding and drought.
◦ The types of biotic stresses imposed on an organism depend the climate where it lives as well as the
species' ability to resist particular stresses.
◦ The damage caused by these various living and nonliving agents can appear very similar. Even with
close observation, accurate diagnosis can be difficult.
◦ For example, browning of leaves on an oak tree caused by drought stress may appear similar to leaf
browning caused by oak wilt, a serious vascular disease caused by a fungus, or the browning caused by
anthracnose, a fairly minor leaf disease.
Agriculture
◦ Biotic stressors are a major focus of agricultural research, due to the vast economic losses caused to cash
crops.
◦ The relationship between biotic stress and plant yield affects economic decisions as well as practical
development.
◦ Biotic stress also impacts horticultural plant health and natural habitats ecology.
◦ It also has dramatic changes in the host recipient.
◦ Although there are many kinds of biotic stress, the majority of plant diseases are caused by fungi.
Arabidopsis thaliana is often used as a model plant to study the responses of plants to different sources of
stress.
History
◦ Biotic stresses have had huge repercussions for humanity; an example of this is the potato blight, an
oomycete which caused widespread famine in England, Ireland and Belgium in the 1840s. Another
example is grape phylloxera coming from North America in the 19th century, which led to the Great
French Wine Blight.
Effect on plant growth
◦ Photosynthesis
◦ Many biotic stresses affect photosynthesis, as chewing insects reduce leaf area and virus infections
reduce the rate of photosynthesis per leaf area. Vascular-wilt fungi compromise the water transport and
photosynthesis by inducing stomatal closure.
Response to stress
◦ Plants have co-evolved with their parasites for several hundred million years. This co-evolutionary
process has resulted in the selection of a wide range of plant defences against microbial pathogens and
herbivorous pests which act to minimise frequency and impact of attack.
◦ These defences include both physical and chemical adaptations, which may either be expressed
constitutively, or in many cases, are activated only in response to attack. For example, utilization of high
metal ion concentrations derived from the soil allow plants to reduce the harmful effects of biotic
stressors (pathogens, herbivores etc.
Inducible defence responses to insect
and herbivores
◦ In order for a plant to defend itself against biotic stress, it must be able to differentiate between an abiotic
and biotic stress. A plants response to herbivores starts with the recognition of certain chemicals that are
abundant in the saliva of the herbivores.
◦ These compounds that trigger a response in plants are known as elicitors or herbivore-associated
molecular patterns (HAMPs)
◦ These HAMPs trigger signalling pathways throughout the plant, initiating its defence mechanism and
allowing the plant to minimise damage to other regions.
◦ Plants perform a more direct attack on an insects digestive system. The plants do this using proteinase
inhibitors. These proteinase inhibitors prevent protein digestion and once in the digestive system of an
insect, they bind tightly and specifically to the active site of protein hydrolysing enzymes such as trypsin
and chymotrypsin.
◦ Calcium Ions also play a large role in activating a plants defensive response. When fatty acid amides are
present in insect saliva, the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are activated. These genes when
activated, play a role in the jasmonic acid pathway.
◦ This pathway is vital for the activation of defence genes in plants. The production of jasmonic acid, a
phytohormone, is a result of the pathway.
Inducible defense responses to
pathogens
◦ Plants are capable of detecting invaders through the recognition of non-self signals despite the lack of a
circulatory or immune system like those found in animals.
◦ Often a plant's first line of defense against microbes occurs at the plant cell surface and involves the
detection of microorganism-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs).
◦ MAMPs include nucleic acids common to viruses and endotoxins on bacterial cell membranes which can
be detected by specialized pattern-recognition receptors.
◦ An increase in the production of salicylic acid (SA) has been shown to be induced by pathogenic
infection.
◦ The increase in SA results in the production of pathogenesis related (PR) genes which ultimately increase
plant resistance to biotrophic and hemibiotrophic pathogens.
Cross tolerance with abiotic stress
◦ Evidence shows that a plant undergoing multiple stresses, both abiotic and biotic (usually pathogen or
herbivore attack), can produce a positive effect on plant performance, by reducing their susceptibility to
biotic stress compared to how they respond to individual stresses. The interaction leads to a crosstalk
between their respective hormone signalling pathways which will either induce or antagonize another
restructuring genes machinery to increase tolerance of defense reactions.
◦ Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are key signalling molecules produced in response to biotic and abiotic
stress cross tolerance. ROS are produced in response to biotic stresses during the oxidative burst.
◦ Tolerance to both biotic and abiotic stresses has been achieved. In maize, breeding programmes have led
to plants which are tolerant to drought and have additional resistance to the parasitic weed Striga
hermonthica
Genetic Basis of Resistance
◦ Genetic analysis of disease resistance in plants began over 100 years ago when
Biffin ( 1905 ) reported that resistance in wheat to stripe rust ( Puccinia striiformis )
was inherited as a single recessive Mendelian trait.
o
There are three types of genetic resistance
o
1) Qualitative Resistance
o
2) Quantitative Resistance and QTLs
o
3) Plant R Gene-Mediated Disease Resistance
Qualitative Resistance
◦ Evidence made it clear that many cases of resistance were inherited in a simple way.
◦ Most characterized resistance genes are dominant in action; for example the Hm1 gene of maize
conferring resistance to Cochliobolus carbonum race 1, a causal
agent of northern leaf spot of maize, secretes an HST known as HC-toxin, which
interferes with a histone deacetylase (HD) altering host gene expression
o However, some recessive resistance genes have proven important sources of durable resistance – e.g.
gene Sr2 conferring resistance to stem rust in wheat (McIntosh et al. 1995 ) ; gene mlo for mildew
resistance in barley
Quantitative Resistance and QTLs
◦ Quantitative resistance, in contrast to qualitative resistance, is generally considered as partial resistance
in a particular cultivar (Young 1996 ) . This type of disease resistance is controlled by multiple loci,
referred to as polygenes or quantitative trait loci (QTLs), and does not comply with simple Mendelian
inheritance.
◦ Examples of such polygenetically inherited resistance are the partial resistance in potato to Phytopthora
infestans , in maize to Puccinia sorghi , and in barley to Puccinia hordei
◦ Although genetically complex forms of disease resistance are still poorly understood, an effective
strategy for studying complex and polygenic forms of disease resistance is known as QTL mapping,
which is based on the use of DNA markers
Plant R Gene-Mediated Disease
Resistance
◦ As mentioned before, plants do not have the benefit of a circulating antibody system, so plant cells
autonomously maintain constant vigilance against pathogens by expressing vast arrays of R genes. These
genes have been genetically defined in interactions with all major classes of plant pathogens including
fungi, bacteria, and viruses.
◦ In the classic gene-for-gene model – also known as receptor-ligand model – of host pathogen
interactions, R gene products recognize pathogen elicitor, encoded by avirulence ( Avr ) genes
◦ Resistance gene-mediated resistance is a hostspecific defense and can only be activated when both R
gene and corresponding Avr gene are present (Staskawicz et al. 1995 ) ; the absence of either component
results in disease, which is typically associated with damage and a reduction in yield of the host plant.
Remote sensing(solution)
◦ The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and various government agencies and private institutions have
provided a great deal of fundamental information relating spectral reflectance and thermal emittance
properties of soils and crops to their agronomic and biophysical characteristics.
◦ This knowledge has facilitated the development and use of various remote sensing methods for non-
destructive monitoring of plant growth and development and for the detection of many environmental
stresses that limit plant productivity.
◦ coupled with rapid advances in computing and position locating technologies, remote sensing from
ground-, air-, and space-based platforms is now capable of providing detailed spatial and temporal
information on plant response to their local environment that is needed for site specific agricultural
management approaches.
Conclusion
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