Plant activators / induced resistance elicitors - their time has come?

摘要

Enhanced resistance to pathogen infection can be induced in plants by treatment with a variety of abiotic and biotic inducers, including plant growth promoting rhizobacteria, cell wall fragments, chemicals and water stress. The resistance induced by these agents (resistance elicitors) is broad spectrum and long-lasting, but is rarely expressed as complete control of infection. In fact, disease control provided by resistance elicitors is variable, with elicitors providing greater than 90% control in some situations and no control in others. This variability in efficacy is likely to be due, in part, to the influence of plant genotype and environment on the expression of induced resistance, but this area is little understood. If induced resistance is to become a useful part of mainstream crop protection, such interactions need to be better understood and work needs to be directed towards determining how best to incorporate induced resistance into crop protection programmes.