Drought Stress Acclimation Imparts Tolerance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Pseudomonas syringae in Nicotiana benthamiana.docVIP

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2013, 14, 9497-9513; doi:10.3390/ijmOPEN ACCESS International Journal of Molecular Sciences ISSN 1422-0067 /journal/ijms Article Drought Stress Acclimation Imparts Tolerance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Pseudomonas syringae in Nicotiana benthamiana Venkategowda Ramegowda 1,2,?,?, Muthappa Senthil-Kumar , Yasuhiro Ishiga 1, 1,? Amita Kaundal , Makarla Udayakumar and Kirankumar S. Mysore 1,* 1 2 1 Plant Biology Division, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ardmore, OK 73401, USA; E-Mails: skmuthappa@ (M.S.-K.); yishiga@ (Y.I.); akaundal@ (A.K.) 2 Department of Crop Physiology, University of Agricultural Science, GKVK, Bangalore 560065, India; E-Mail: udayakumar_m@ ? Present address: Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA; E-Mail: ramshv@. ? These authors contributed equally to this work. * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: ksmysore@; Tel.: +1-580-224-6740; Fax: +1-580-224-6692. Received: 12 March 2013; in revised form: 13 April 2013 / Accepted: 22 April 2013 / Published: 2 May 2013 Abstract: Acclimation of plants with an abiotic stress can impart tolerance to some biotic stresses. Such a priming response has not been widely studied. In particular, little is known about enhanced defense capacity of drought stress acclimated plants to fungal and bacterial pathogens. Here we show that prior drought acclimation in Nicotiana benthamiana plants imparts tolerance to necrotrophic fungus, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, and also to hemi-biotrophic bacterial pathogen, Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci. S. sclerotiorum inoculation on N. benthamiana plants acclimated with drought stress lead to less disease-induced cell death compared to non-acclimated plants. Furthermore, inoculation of P. syringae pv. tabaci on N. benthamiana plants acclimated to moderate drought stress showed reduced dise