Dehydration Stress Contributes to the Enhancement of Plant Defense Response and Mite Performance on Barley

Abstract

Under natural conditions, plants suffer different stresses simultaneously or in a sequential way. At present, the combined effect of biotic and abiotic stressors is one of the most important threats to crop production. Understanding how plants deal with the panoply of potential stresses affecting them is crucial to develop biotechnological tools to protect plants. As well as for drought stress, the economic importance of the spider mite on agriculture is expected to increase due to climate change. Barley is a host of the polyphagous spider mite Tetranychus urticae and drought produces important yield losses. To obtain insights on the combined effect of drought and mite stresses on the defensive response of this cereal, we have analyzed the transcriptomic responses of barley plants subjected to dehydration (water-deficit) treatment, spider mite attack, or to the combined dehydration-spider mite stress. The expression patterns of mite-induced responsive genes included many jasmonic acid responsive genes and were quickly induced. In contrast, genes related to dehydration tolerance were later up-regulated. Besides, a higher up-regulation of mite-induced defenses was showed by the combined dehydration and mite treatment than by the individual mite stress. On the other hand, the performance of the mite in dehydration stressed and well-watered plants was tested. Despite the stronger defensive response in plants that suffer dehydration and mite stresses, the spider mite demonstrates a better performance under dehydration condition than in well-watered plants. These results highlight the complexity of the regulatory events leading to the response to a combination of stresses and emphasize the difficulties to predict their consequences on crop production.

The Price of the Induced Defense Against Pests: A Meta-Analysis

“…The specificity of induced plant responses has been previously associated to the recognition of specific feeding styles and damage patterns and/or herbivore specific elicitors in salivary secretions and regurgitates introduced in the plant during the feeding process (Santamaria et al, 2018 ). These responses will turn out with very specific allocation resources that will have a positive, negative or neutral impact on plant fitness.…”

“…As phytophagous feeding causes numerous alterations of the plant primary metabolism, several authors have monitored different parameters related to photosynthesis, transpiration, remobilization of carbon and nitrogen resources, sugar or water content as indicators of plant growth (Sances et al, 1979 ; Hutchison and Campbell, 1994 ; Watanabe and Kitagawa, 2000 ; Nykänen and Koricheva, 2004 ; Botha et al, 2006 ; Giri et al, 2006 ; Schmidt et al, 2009 ; Halitschke et al, 2011 ; Ochoa-Lopez et al, 2015 ; Machado et al, 2017 ; Santamaria et al, 2017 , 2018 ; Bufon et al, 2020 ). In addition, as the leaves are the photosynthetic organs, relative growth rate (RGR), leaf number, leaf length, leaf area, specific leaf area, leaf/mass ratio, biomass or biomass allocation have been measured to evaluate plant growth (Vranjic and Ash, 1997 ; Nykänen and Koricheva, 2004 ; Schmidt et al, 2009 ; Sotelo et al, 2014 ; Ochoa-Lopez et al, 2015 ; Santamaria et al, 2018 ; Bufon et al, 2020 ). Although the most direct measure of fitness is to analyse the offspring of a plant, plant fitness has also been inferred from the study of the plant reproductive structures (flowers), propagules (seeds) or the actual reproductive success (number of germinating seeds) (Erb, 2018 ).…”

Generalist and Specialist Mite Herbivores Induce Similar Defense Responses in Maize and Barley but Differ in Susceptibility to Benzoxazinoids

“…These dynamics resemble those reported previously in studies with T. urticae in dicots including A. thaliana , tomato, and grapevine ( Zhurov et al, 2014 ; Martel et al, 2015 ; Díaz-Riquelme et al, 2016 ). Recently, Santamaría et al (2018) examined transcriptomic responses to T. urticae in barley in a design that examined both biotic and abiotic stresses. Although their experimental design differed markedly from ours, with transcriptomic responses assessed at long time points (RNA-seq data were collected after 7 days of herbivore exposure), they also observed upregulation of genes associated with JA biosynthesis and signaling.…”

An Intimate Relationship Between Eriophyoid Mites and Their Host Plants – A Review

“…In particular, transcriptomic and proteomic on T. urticae -plant interactions with shaded light on the interplay between host plants and mite can allow the study from the protein constituents of mite saliva and their functions (Jonckheere et al, 2016, 2018; Villarroel et al, 2016; Rioja et al, 2017) to the responses of plants to the mite attack (Santamaria et al, 2013, 2017; Bensoussan et al, 2016; Diaz-Mendoza et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2017). Mite-plant interactions can be influenced by the environment through its effect on the plant status, i.e., drought stress (Ximenez-Embun et al, 2017; Santamaria et al, 2018), and this aspect appear of particular importance for eriophyoids. Potentially, the results could be used to exploit genomic information and new technologies to accelerate breeding program for resistance and tolerance in crops infested by eriophyoids (Salinas et al, 2013; Martel et al, 2015; Díaz-Riquelme et al, 2016; Gascuel et al, 2017; Karkute et al, 2017; di Donato et al, 2018; Haque et al, 2018).…”