Researchers find new way to protect plants from fungal infection
ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200922102427.htm
- Source:
- Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
- Summary:
- Widespread fungal disease in plants can be controlled with a commercially available chemical that has been primarily used in medicine until now. In a comprehensive experiment scientists have uncovered a new metabolic pathway that can be disrupted with this chemical, thus preventing many known plant fungi from invading the host plant.
- Widespread fungal disease in plants can be controlled with a commercially available chemical that has been primarily used in medicine until now. This discovery was made by scientists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of the State of Paraná in Brazil. In a comprehensive experiment the team has uncovered a new metabolic pathway that can be disrupted with this chemical, thus preventing many known plant fungi from invading the host plant. The team reported on their study in the scientific journal Phytopathology.
The fungus Colletotrichum graminicola is prevalent around the world. It infects maize, causing anthracnose, a disease that causes the plant's leaves to turn yellow at first and then ultimately to succumb to toxins. The fungus multiplies through spores that initially land on the surface of the plant. There they find rather inhospitable conditions: a lack of most of the nutrients that fungi need to develop -- in particular nitrogen. "The only option they have is to break down some of their own nitrogen-containing molecules, for instance purines, the building blocks of DNA or RNA," explains plant pathologist Professor Holger Deising from MLU.
The researchers on Deising's team have found a way to impede this transitional phase which the fungus relies on. To do this, the team administered acetohydroxamic acid onto the plants, a substance also used to treat harmful bacteria in the human stomach, and which is known to inhibit the breakdown of urea. "The acid prevents the harmful fungi from penetrating into the plants and from becoming infectious," says Deising.
Read on: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200922102427.htm