Plant–plant communication in variety mixtures plays on disease susceptibility and immunity

Marie-Odile Bancal (1)

1 ECOSYS - Ecologie fonctionnelle et écotoxicologie des agroécosystèmes

Intraspecific mixtures are a well-known means to modulate epidemics in crops, but knowledge of the immunity they induce is scarce. Pélissier et al. (2021a) selected pairs of susceptible wheat or rice cultivars cross-modulating disease severity and showed that belowground interactions were involved in communicating infection. Healthy neighbours could initiate significant modulations of transcription of basal immunity genes after pathogen inoculation. No general rule was observed between pathosystems, but the demonstration of the effect of healthy neighbours on disease susceptibility and immunity in adjacent plants is a key finding as we strive to understand health in varietal mixtures

Mots clés: plant interactions; rice; wheat; Disease; immunity; intraspecific mixture; neighbour; plant; plant interactions

Domaines: Phytopathologie et phytopharmacie; Agronomie; Immunologie

Marie-Odile Bancal. Plant–plant communication in variety mixtures plays on disease susceptibility and immunity. Journal of Experimental Botany, 2021, 72 (18), pp.6084-6086. ⟨10.1093/jxb/erab377⟩. ⟨hal-03659214⟩