Abstract

Background: Increasing temperatures are of major concern worldwide as it results in decreased crop yield if plants cannot acclimate to this stress. Furthermore, it is not clear as to how it effects on other diseases such as pathogen attacks by making plants even more vulnerable.

Ascochyta blight by Didymella pinodes, is a main cause for severe  losses of pea production every year. Therefor, the search for resistance traits and their exact regulation is a major goal for farmers.

Aim: By focusing on target metabolic pathways, we want to better understand signal transduction and turnover dynamics for the early defense mechanisms of different Pisum sativum cultivars upon pathogen attack and how these are affected by heat stress.

Priliminary Data: This project is based on a prevously fundet FWF Project [P24870-B22]: Tripartite symbiosis formed by Pisum sativum, rhizobia and mycorrhiza...more »
Target proteins and pathways are based on those works, where we found that microsymbions induced systemic resistance upon D. pinodes in P. sativum by enhanced levels of several defense mechanisms prior and during pathogen attack. Cultivars molecular background can further promote these effects.

Major Questions:

1) The pisatin pathway is involved in early pathogen defense. It hampers the pathogen switching from the biotrophic- to necrotrophic state. What is the turnover rate of that pathways proteome from onset of infection? Does reaction time and/or intensity matter? How?

2) The monolignol pathway regulation upon pathogen response is an interplay between different compartments. How/when and where are the enzymes of this pathway synthesized during infection?

3) Increasing temperatures will affect pathogenicity. How?

PI:
Stefanie Wienkoop »