Accumulation of phytoalexins in beans, soybeans and sorghum by fungal filtrates

Abstract

The use of elicitors in plants for disease control is demonstrated by the accumulation of phytoalexins. Among these elicitors, metabolic products from fungi have been shown to be effective in the activation of mechanisms of induced resistance. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of filtrates from the saprobic fungi Curvularia inaequalis, Pseudobotrytis terrestris, Memnoniella echinata and Curvularia eragrostidis in inducing phaseolin, glyceolin and deoxyanthocyanidins. For this, fungal mycelial disks were liquid-subcultured in potato dextrose (BD) media and maintained in BOD at 25 °C and 12 h of light and darkness. After 20 days, the cultures were filtered and, the filtrates were used in the experiments. Phaseolin was measured in etiolated hypocotyls of bean. For glyceolin evaluation, cotyledons of soybean were used. The deoxyanthocyanidin accumulation was evaluated in etiolated mesocotyls of sorghum. The results were subjected to analysis of variance and compared by regression tests (p < 0.05). The filtrates of the saprobic fungi C. eragrostidis, C. inaequalis, P. terrestris and M. echinata promoted 9, 8, 9 and 7% greater increases in the concentration of phaseolin accumulations, respectively. The glyceolin accumulation varied with the concentration of C. eragrostidis, C. inaequalis and P. terrestris by adjusting the behavior to a cubic model. The deoxyanthocyanidin accumulation increased with concentration, while the filtrates of M. echinata and C. eragrostidis promoted 2 to 3 times more increases than the application of water. The filtrates of P. terrestris, C. eragrostidis, C. inaequalis and M. echinata induced accumulations of phytoalexins in soybean, beans and sorghum.