Plant-plant communication in variety mixtures plays on disease susceptibility and immunity

Abstract

Intraspecific mixtures are a well-known means to modulate epidemics in crops, but knowledge of the immunity they induce is scarce. Pélissier et al. (2021a) selected pairs of susceptible wheat or rice cultivars cross-modulating disease severity and showed that belowground interactions were involved in communicating infection. Healthy neighbours could initiate significant modulations of transcription of basal immunity genes after pathogen inoculation. No general rule was observed between pathosystems, but the demonstration of the effect of healthy neighbours on disease susceptibility and immunity in adjacent plants is a key finding as we strive to understand health in varietal mixtures.