Impact of elevated temperatures and limiting water supply on virus resistance of tomato plants

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Climate changes are likely to impact plant diseases. Especially drought and heat stress will influence plant-virus interactions. Here we propose to study mechanisms of resistance to Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) and Potato virus Y (PVY) of tomato plants exposed to heat and drought stress. Both viruses belong to different virus families with devastating impact on tomato yield worldwide. In addition, Tsw-mediated TSWV resistance is unstable under elevated temperatures, which makes development of novel resistance strategies a necessity. To achieve these goals, we propose to generate transgenic tomato plants with altered expression of TSWV or PVY interacting host proteins and to validate resistance of these transgenic plants under heat and drought stress. To study the possible suppression of virus resistance by heat and drought stress, transgenic plants and additional tomato genotypes carrying resistance genes conferring potyvirus and tospovirus resistance will be challenged with elevated temperatures and limiting water supply prior infection with different PVY and TSWV isolates under controlled and field conditions. Monitoring virus replication as well as metabolic and transcriptional changes will allow a comparative analysis linking specific transcript and metabolite changes to susceptible and resistant host-virus combinations and will help to design durable heat- and drought-stable virus resistance in tomato plants.