Fungi belonging to the genus Trichoderma, commonly found in soil or colonizing plant roots, exert beneficial effects on plants, including the promotion of growth and the induction of resistance to disease. T. virens and T. atroviride secrete the proteins Sm1 and Epl1, respectively, which elicit local and systemic disease resistance in plants. In this work, we show that these fungi promote growt...

Arabidopsis NPR1/NIM1 is a key regulator of systemic acquired resistance (SAR), which confers lasting broad-spectrum resistance. Over-expression of Arabidopsis NPR1 or the NPR1 homolog 1 (NH1) in rice results in enhanced resistance to the pathogen Xanthomonasoryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), suggesting the presence of a related defense pathway in rice. We investigated this pathway in rice by identifying...

Significant new advances at the molecular level in the field of plant-pathogen interactions form the basis for novel transgenic approaches to crop protection. The cloning of disease resistance genes and the dissection of the signal transduction components of the hypersensitive response and systemic acquired resistance pathways have greatly increased the diversity of options available for transg...

Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is a broad-spectrum resistance in plants that involves the upregulation of a battery of pathogenesis-related (PR) genes. NPR1 is a key regulator in the signal transduction pathway that leads to SAR. Mutations in NPR1 result in a failure to induce PR genes in systemic tissues and a heightened susceptibility to pathogen infection, whereas overexpression of the N...

ABSTRACT A light sphagnum peat mix inoculated with Trichoderma hamatum 382 consistently provided a significant (P = 0.05) degree of protection against bacterial spot of tomato and its pathogen Xanthomonas euvesicatoria 110c compared with the control peat mix, even though this biocontrol agent did not colonize aboveground plant parts. To gain insight into the mechanism by which T. hamatum 382 in...

Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is a potent innate immunity system in plants and has been used in rice fields. Development of SAR, involving priming, is achieved by activation of salicylic acid (SA)-mediated pathway. To determine whether heat shock (HS) treatment can induce SAR, we analyzed the effects of HS on Arabidopsis. HS treatment induced disease resistance, expression of SAR marker ge...