Crop vaccination without side effects: optimising the cost-benefit balance of chemically induced immune priming in greenhouse vegetables.

每年种植的作物可能有一半以上因病虫害而损失。化学杀虫剂的使用有助于减少这些损失，但随着疾病产生抗药性，许多杀虫剂的效率越来越低，其他杀虫剂因担心它们可能影响环境或人类健康而退出市场。我们项目的目标是开发一种不同的方法，通过增强作物自身的免疫系统来保护作物。这种策略被称为化学诱导免疫引发，已用于保护某些作物免受商业上重要的疾病，包括灰霉病和霜霉病。然而，这些抗性诱导化学品的商业化并不成功，因为它们通常也抑制植物生长。我们研究小组最近的一项突破表明，有可能将化学引发剂β-氨基丁酸（BABA）的抗性诱导作用与其生长抑制作用分开。虽然BABA保护植物免受非常广泛的商业相关疾病的侵害，但当以较高剂量施用时，它也会阻碍植物生长并影响作物产量。最近，我们发现BABA的受体通过单独的信号传导途径控制抗病性和伴随的植物胁迫反应（Luna等人，2014; Nature Chemical Biology 10：450 - 456）。目前的项目旨在将这些研究结果从模式系统（拟南芥）转化为蔬菜作物（番茄和生菜）。国际植物育种公司Enza Zagreb是世界上最大的农民蔬菜种子供应商之一，他们对有机会提高免疫启动的益处感到非常兴奋，他们提出向我们提供他们的研究材料，并共同资助我们的工作。我们共同设计了一个全新的项目，以优化蔬菜作物中化学诱导的免疫启动，使用遗传和化学策略的综合方法来减少蔬菜行业中的农药投入。如果成功，我们的方法可以有效地用于以更可持续的方式保护蔬菜作物免受破坏性疾病的侵害。

It is possible that over half of the crops cultivated each year are lost to pests and diseases. The use of chemical pesticides helps to reduce these losses, but many pesticides are becoming less efficient as diseases develop resistance, and others are being removed from the market because of fears that they might affect the environment or human health. The objective of our project is to develop a different approach to protecting crops by boosting their own immune system. This strategy, known as chemically induced immune priming, has been used to protect some crops against commercially important diseases, including grey mould and downy mildew. However, the commercialisation of these resistance-inducing chemicals has not been successful, because they often also repress plant growth. A recent breakthrough by our research team showed that it is possible to separate the resistance-inducing effects of the chemical priming agent beta-aminobutyric acid (BABA) from its growth repressing effects. Although BABA protects plants against an exceptionally wide range of commercially relevant diseases, it also stunts plant growth and affects crop yield when applied at higher doses. Recently, we discovered that the receptor for BABA controls disease resistance and the accompanying plant stress response via separate signalling pathways (Luna et al. 2014; Nature Chemical Biology 10: 450 - 456). The current project aims to translate these research findings from the model system (Arabidopsis) to vegetable crops (tomato and lettuce). The international plant breeding company Enza Zaden, one of the world's largest suppliers of vegetable seeds to farmers, are so excited about the opportunity to enhance the benefits of immune priming that they have offered to make their research materials available to us and to co-fund our work. Together, we have designed an entirely novel project to optimize chemically-induced immune priming in vegetable crops, using an integrated approach of genetic and chemical strategies to reduce input of pesticides in the vegetable industry. If successful, our approach can be used effectively to protect vegetable crops in a more sustainable manner from damaging diseases.