Climate change and the associated increase in atmospheric CO 2 levels may affect the severity of plant diseases and threaten future crop yields. Here, we compared responses of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to leaf and root pathogens with hemi-biotrophic or necrotrophic infection strategies under pre-industrial, current, and future atmospheric CO 2 conditions. Defenses against biotrophs are generally regulated by salicylic acid (SA) signaling, whereas jasmonic acid (JA) signaling controls defenses against necrotrophs. Under the CO 2 conditions tested, basal expression of the JA-responsive marker gene PDF1.2 increased at increasing CO 2 concentrations. The SA-responsive marker genes ICS1 and FRK1 showed an opposite behavior, being lower expressed under high CO 2 and higher expressed under low CO 2 , respectively. Accordingly, plants showed enhanced resistance to the necrotrophic leaf pathogen Botrytis cinerea under high CO 2 , while resistance to the hemi-biotrophic leaf pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato was reduced. The opposite was true for plants grown under low CO 2. Disease severity caused by the soil-borne pathogens Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. raphani and Rhizoctonia solani was similar under all CO 2 conditions tested. Collectively, our results stress the notion that atmospheric CO 2 impacts the balance between SA-and JAdependent defenses and concomitant resistance against foliar (hemi)biotrophic and necrotrophic pathogens. The direction of the CO 2-mediated effects on SA-and JAmediated defenses varies between reported studies, suggesting that the defense output is influenced by environmental context. These findings highlight that a wider dynamic range of climate change parameters should be studied simultaneously to harness plant traits for the development of future climate-resilient crops.
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