Nazar Muhammad

2014-ag- 9212
PLANT GROWTH REGULATORS IN RELATION TO PLANT DISEASE RESISTANCE

Hormones are tuners of plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. They are involved in
various complicated networks, through which they modulate responses to different stimuli
(Dong-Lei et al.,2013). Four hormones primarily regulate plant defense to pathogens: salicylic
acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), ethylene (Et) and abscisic acid (ABA). In susceptible plants, viral
infections result in hormonal disruption, which manifests as the simultaneous induction of
several antagonistic hormones. However, these antagonistic hormones may exhibit some
sequential accumulation in resistant lines.

In the natural environment, the plants are exposed to different attacker which causes the
successive compromise on plant survival and future biological stress. Green energy is the
ultimate source of most organisms; Plants have some varieties that may be constitutively
expressed resistance against pathogen or pest attack (Glazebrook, Panstruga et al., 2009). There
is some molecular mechanism in Plants that is used to detect pathogens and pests, and starts the
defense reaction.

These immune responses are necessary because the use of metabolites in plant resistance could
be harmful to other plant traits and other physiological processes, such as biomass and seed
production (Walters and Viva, 2007; KEMPEL et al., 2011).

Abscisic acid

Abscisic acid (ABA) also has a protruding role against biotic stress and abiotic stress.
ABA can encourage plant defense and is involved in a complicated linkage of synergistic and
antagonistic interactions. On the basis of experiments with exogenous application of ABA,
inhibition of ABA biosynthesis and use of ABA-deficient mutants it has been shown that
improved ABA levels correlated with amplified susceptibility while decrease in level increased
resistance to many pathogens (Ton et al., 2009). With few exemptions, abscisic acid has been
considered a deleterious to disease resistance. This negative effect appears to be due to the
interfering of abscisic acid with biotic stress signaling that is regulated by salicylic acid,
jasmonic acid and ethylene, and to an supplementary effect of ABA on shared components of
stress signaling (Mauch-Mani and Mauch, 2005).

The role of ABA in disease resistance rests complex while early defense through ABA-
dependent stomatal closure and callose deposition is appropriate to halt most potentially harmful
microbes. However ABA promotes early defense barriers to halt pathogens in the initial stage of
colonization and simultaneously prevents preventable activation of costly SA- and JA-dependent
defenses. Pathogens need to penetrate plant tissue to infect a host plant successfully. Some fungi
overcome the first cell layer by applying mechanical force onto the epidermal cell wall or by
secreting cuticle and cell wall degrading enzymes (Mendgen et al., 1996). Other pathogens
instead use pre-existing openings, such as stomata or wounds. Plants can proliferation their pre-
invasive penetration resistance by closing stomata promptly upon perception of microbes, which
happens within 1 h after inoculation with pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria. This defense
response can be represented by application of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs).
The ABA-dependent control of PAMP-induced stomatal closure needs nitric oxide (NO), the
protein kinase and a well-designed SA signaling pathway.

Auxin

Auxin is the first identified plant hormone, produces a growth response at a distance from
its site of synthesis and refer to as transported chemical messenger. Plant infection by various
pathogens like fungi, bacteria, viruses, mollicutes, and nematodes have been shown to
enhance auxin (IAA) levels, however, some pathogens seem to lower the auxin level of the
host. Some of the pathogens not only increases levels of IAA in their hosts, but produces IAA. In
some diseases increased levels of IAA due to the decreased degradation of IAA through the
inhibition of IAA oxidase like in corn smut and stem rust of wheat. Clubroot of cabbage
(Plasmodiophora brassicae) A. tumefaciens causing crown gall and the one causing leafy gall of
sweet pea and other plants, Corn smut (Ustilago maydis), cedar apple rust (Gymnosporangium
juniperivirginianae), banana wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f. cubense), The root knot nematode
(Meloidogyne sp.).

Despite considerable interest in the production of IAA by plant pathogens and the
demonstration of increased levels of this auxin in many diseased tissues, no specific work has
been carried out on the actual sources of IAA in vivo. It is clear that increased levels of IAA
could result from increased synthesis by either host or pathogen, as well as from interference in
the mechanisms of auxin degradation in the host. Since, as it was indicated above, the
biosynthesis of IAA appears to proceed along very similar lines both in the host and the
pathogen, experimentally it is quite difficult to determine precisely the source of IAA in
diseased tissues. The subject of synthesis of IAA in diseased plants has remained, therefore,
argely unexplored. Information on this aspect of the problem, however, is of great theoretical
importance, and it is basic to our understanding of the role of IAA in pathogenesis. In the case of
the crown gall bacterium, it has been shown that the formation of IAA is dependent on the
presence of tryptophan in the medium (Kaper and Veldstra, 1958).

Gibberellins

Gibberellins are normal components of green plants and are also produced by numerous
microorganisms. The best recognized gibberellin: gibberellic acid. Gibberellins seem to stimulate
genes that have been earlier turned off. Gibberellins firstly isolated from Gibberella fujikuroi,
which induce the foolish seedling disease of rice. The foolish seedling disease of rice, in which
rice seedlings infested with the fungus Gibberella fujikuroi grows promptly and taller than
healthy.

Cytokinins

Cytokinins are indispensable for cell growth and differentiation. In count, they constrain
the breakdown of proteins and nucleic acids, thus causing the inhibition of senescence, and they
have the ability to direct the movement of amino acids and other nutrients through the plant
toward the point of high cytokinin concentration. Cytokinins occur in precisely small
concentrations in green plants, seeds, and in the sap stream. A number of cytokinins, e.g., zeatin
and isopentenyl adenosine (IPA), have been isolated from plants. Cytokinin activity rises in
clubroot galls, crown galls, in smut and rust galls, and in rust-infected bean leaves. A cytokinin is
partially responsible for numerous bacterial galls of plants, e.g. leafy gall disease of sweet pea
triggered by the bacterium Rhodococcus (Corynebacterium) fascians, and the witches broom
diseases instigated by fungi and mollicutes.
SALICYLIC ACID

It plays a key role in conferring resistance against pathogens has been described thoroughly. In
Arabidopsis, from chorismate SA is synthisized (tryptophan precursor and, consequently auxins)
by two pathways, either by phenylalanine & through isochorismate

1. Kaper, J. and H. Veldstra. 1958. On the metabolism of tryptophan by Agrobacterium

tumefaciens. Biochimica et biophysica acta. 30:401-420.
2. Mauch-Mani, B. and F. Mauch. 2005. The role of abscisic acid in plantpathogen interactions.
Current opinion in plant biology. 8:409-414.
3. Mendgen, K., M. Hahn and H. Deising. 1996. Morphogenesis and mechanisms of penetration
by plant pathogenic fungi. Annual review of phytopathology. 34:367-386.
4. Ton, J., V. Flors and B. Mauch-Mani. 2009. The multifaceted role of ABA in disease
resistance. Trends in plant science. 14:310-317.