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Enhanced resistance against Thielaviopsis basicola in transgenic cotton plants expressing Arabidopsis NPR1 gene

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Abstract

Black root rot, caused by Thielaviopsis basicola, is an important disease in several crops including cotton. We studied the response of Arabidopsis NPR1 (AtNPR1)-expressing cotton lines, previously shown to be highly resistant to a diverse set of pathogens, to a challenge from T. basicola. In four different experiments, we found significant degree of tolerance in the transgenic lines to black root rot. Although transformants showed the typical root discoloration symptoms similar to the wild-type control plants following infection, their roots tended to recover faster and resumed normal growth. Better performance of transgenic plants is reflected by the fact that they have significantly higher shoot and root mass, longer shoot length, and greater number of boll-set. Transcriptional analysis of the defense response showed that the roots of AtNPR1-overexpressing transgenic plants exhibited stronger and faster induction of most of these defense-related genes, particularly PR1, thaumatin, glucanase, LOX1, and chitinase. The results obtained in this investigation provide further support for a broad-spectrum nature of the resistance conferred by overexpression of AtNPR1 gene in cotton.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ms. LeAnne M. Campbell for the production of the transformants and Dr. Vilas Parkhi for the original characterization of the transgenic lines used in this study. This research was supported by funds from Cotton Inc., Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board—Advanced Research Program (#000517-0005-2006), and Texas AgriLife Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Plant Genomics and Biotechnology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-2123, USA

    Vinod Kumar, Sameer G. Joshi & Keerti S. Rathore

  2. Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-2474, USA

    Keerti S. Rathore

  3. USDA-ARS, Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center, College Station, TX, 77845, USA

    Alois A. Bell

Authors
  1. Vinod Kumar
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  2. Sameer G. Joshi
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  3. Alois A. Bell
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  4. Keerti S. Rathore
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Correspondence to Keerti S. Rathore.

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Kumar, V., Joshi, S.G., Bell, A.A. et al. Enhanced resistance against Thielaviopsis basicola in transgenic cotton plants expressing Arabidopsis NPR1 gene. Transgenic Res 22, 359–368 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-012-9652-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-012-9652-9

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