Development of new strategies for breeders towards nematode-resistant crops by interfering with the stress signal transduction cascades in plants
Abstract
Plant-nematode parasitism on cultivated crop species became a big issue in modern agriculture, since billions of EUR are lost world wide due to nematode activity. The main obstacle in fighting against these parasites is the long-term endurance of the cysts in the soil and their resistance to highly toxic chemicals. Thus, the number of available techniques against nematode parasitism is limited and development of new strategies is urgently required. Presently, much hope is laid into molecular biological approaches in order to elucidate essential mechanisms for nematode parasitism. This information is needed for plant breeders in order to produce more tolerant or resistant plant cultivars. Infection of the beet cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii and host plant responses can be successfully studied with model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we propose to investigate Arabidopsis plant lines with modified stress signalling components protein phosphatases and kinases, of their responses to parasitic nematodes. Such plants with modified signalling components were shown to demonstrate enhanced resistance to herbivorous insects due to modulation in plant stress hormone production and stress signalling cascades. We assume that screening these modified plants for nematode-related phenotypes will generate more understanding in plant-nematode interaction and produce valuable information to be applied directly to crops for breeding towards enhanced nematode control.
keywords Heterodera schachtii molecular biology phytopathology stress signalling
Publikationen
Heterodera schachtii changes early signaling events in Arabidopsis
Autoren: Sidonskaya E., Schausberger P., Meskiene I., Wieczorek K. & Hofmann J. Jahr: 2012
Conference & Workshop proceedings, paper, abstract
Project staff
BOKU partners
External partners
Universität Wien, Max F. Perutz Laboratories
Dr. Irute Meskiene
partner