Climate Change Makes Plants More Vulnerable to Diseases; New Research Finds Way To Boost Its Immune System

Not only do heat waves harm people, but they also harm the plants that provide us with food. This is because when temperatures rise too high, some plant defenses become less effective, making plants more vulnerable to pathogen and insect pest infestations.

Plant's Immunity

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Researchers now claimed to have found a protein in plant cells that help explain why immunity deteriorates as mercury levels rise.

Additionally, they have figured out how to stop the loss and improve the plant's heat resistance, as per ScienceDaily.

The production of salicylic acid, a defense hormone that activates a plant's immune system and thwarts invaders before they can do too much harm, is suppressed by high temperatures, according to scientists.

However, the molecular causes of this immunity implosion were not fully known.

Duke University biologist and corresponding author Sheng-Yang and his graduate student Bethany Huot discovered in the mid-2010s that even brief heat waves can have a significant impact on the hormone defenses in Arabidopsis plants, making them more vulnerable to infection by the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae.

To prevent bacteria from spreading, salicylic acid levels in a plant's leaves typically increase sevenfold when this pathogen attacks.

But plants can no longer produce sufficient defense hormone to prevent infection from getting hold when temperature increases above 86 degrees just for two days - not even triple digits.

Because the CBP60g gene functions as a master switch that governs numerous other genes, anything that inhibits or downregulates it also inhibits a large number of other genes, which prevents the production of the proteins necessary for a plant cell to produce salicylic acid.

Further research established that the overheating impairs the ability of the plant's innate immunity to function by preventing the cellular machinery required to begin trying to read out the genetic information in the CBP60g gene from properly assembling.

Heat waves are getting worse due to global warming, which is trying to weaken plants' natural defenses.

But the global economy already loses up to 40% of agriculture sector annually to pests and diseases, at a cost of about $300 billion.

The world's food production is rising at the same time due to population growth.

Forecasts indicated that food production will have to increase by 60% in food to support the approximate 10 billion people, who will inhabit the planet by 2050.

Attempts to rebuild CBP60g genetic expression in rapeseed have since produced encouraging results.

The expert claimed that genes with comparable DNA sequences are actually common among plants.

Also Read: Too Much Rain, Humidity Promote Disease Outbreaks in Plants

Plant's defense

The adaptive immune system of vertebrates is highly developed and relies on an almost infinite variety of antigen receptors that are clonally conveyed by specialized immune cells that circulate throughout the body, as per Nature Reviews Immunology.

Vertebrates have exceptional antigen-specific immune capabilities and memory thanks to these immune cells, which also reduce self-reactivity.

But plants don't have highly mobile immune cells.

Instead, it is believed that every plant cell can activate an efficient immune response.

The plants develop specific, self-tolerance, and immune memory by recent research suggests that plants have a multilayered innate immune system that includes chromosomal changes, systemic signaling, and self-surveillance to create an effective defense.