Category

Plant Health

Bacteria and Plants Fight Alike

By | News, Plant Health, Plant Science

A brown blotch on a plant leaf may be a sign that the plant’s defenses are hard at work: When a plant is infected by a virus, fungus or bacterium, its immune response keeps the disease from spreading by killing the infected cell, as well as a few surrounding ones. A new study points to the evolutionary origins of this plant immune mechanism. The study may help explain how major plant defenses work and how they may one day be strengthened to increase resilience against plant diseases that each year cause billions of dollars of crop losses worldwide.

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tomatoes

​A sequence change in a single protein allowed a tomato virus to become a global crop pandemic​​

By | Agriculture, Fruits and Vegetables, News, Plant Health

disease has emerged, threatening tomato production worldwide. This is caused by the Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV), a member of a devastating group of plant viruses called tobamoviruses. ToBRFV overcomes all known tobamovirus resistance in tomato, including the one conferred by Tm-22, a resistance gene responsible for the stable resistance to these viruses for more than 60 years.

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