ABA is involved in the resistance response of Arabidopsis thaliana against Meloidogyne paranaensis

• Published in: Plant disease
• Main Authors: Yop, Geovana de Souza, Gair, Luiz Henrique Voigt, da Silva, Victoria Stern, Machado, Andressa Cristina Zamboni, Santiago, Débora Cristina, Tomaz, Juarez Pires
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 12.02.2023
• Subjects: abi4; root-knot nematode; biosynthesis; abscisic acid; aba2
• ISSN: 0191-2917

Abscisic acid (ABA) is a classical hormone involved in the plant defense against abiotic stresses, especially drought. However, its role in the response against biotic stresses is controversial: it can induce resistance to some pathogens but can increase the susceptibility to other ones. Information regarding the effect of ABA in the relationship between plants and sedentary phytonematodes, as , are scarce. In this study, we reported ABA changing susceptibility level against . The population of was reduced 58.3% with the application of exogenous ABA 24 hours before the nematode inoculation, which demonstrated that this phytohormone plays a role in the pre-infectional defense of A. thaliana against this root-knot nematode. The increases in the nematode population densities in the ABA biosynthesis mutant, aba2-1, corroborated the results observed with the exogenous application of ABA. The phytohormone did not show nematicide or nematostatic effects on juveniles in in vitro tests, indicating that the response is linked to intrinsic plant factors, which was corroborated by the decrease in the number of nematodes in the abi4-1 mutant. This reduction indicates that the gene expression regulation by transcript factors possibly is related to regulatory cascades mediated by ABA in the response of A. thaliana against .