Moore Foundation-HHMI Plant Biology Investigator Sheng Yang He and colleagues at Michigan State University have discovered too much rain, coupled with prolonged high levels of humidity, can result in more plant disease.
These findings shed new light on how climate conditions can influence disease outbreaks in all plants, including field crops.
It's been a long-standing concept among plant scientists that for disease to occur, the plant needs to be susceptible and the pathogen that attacks it must be very virulent.
"We discovered a new mechanism that allows bacteria to infect plants," said He. "What we discovered, in addition to their ability to suppress the plant's immune system, is that bacteria also create a watery environment inside the plant so that they can cause disease."
The researchers showed certain virulent bacteria are able to directly inject a protein into a plant's cells to increase water content in a part of the plant where bacteria live. Coupled with high humidity, this mechanism results in an increase in the prevalence of disease.
"Humidity is required for bacteria inside the leaf to accumulate water," said co-author Xiu-Fang Xin, a research associate at Michigan State University. "Conditions need to be right. That's why we don't see widespread plant diseases every year."
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