Resistance to Fungal Diseases in Cereals

A special issue of Genes (ISSN 2073-4425). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Genetics and Genomics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 October 2020) | Viewed by 6740

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Guest Editor
Research Centre for Cereal and Industrial Crops, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, 24126 Bergamo, Italy
Interests: transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation mechanisms; genetic analysis of quantitative traits related to grain yield and quality of cereals; functional analysis of abiotic stress regulated genes
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Guest Editor
Research Centre for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Council for Agricultural and Economics Research (CREA), via San Protaso 302, 29017 Fiorenzuola d’Arda (PC), Italy
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fungal pathogens pose a great challenge to cereal production worldwide, with a strong impact on grain yield, quality, and safety. Especially in the frame of the current climate changes, new virulent races emerge, overcoming established resistance genes in cultivars. Moreover, they are spreading in areas in which they were not present before. Crop treatments with fungicides are not completely effective in protecting plants from pathogen attacks, and they pose serious concerns in terms of environmental pollution and agriculture sustainability. It is therefore of outstanding importance to develop new tools to strongly reduce the negative impact of fungal diseases on cereal crop production.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to present to the scientific community tools and methods to limit the damages inferred by fungal pathogens on cereal crop production from a multidisciplinary point of view. Manuscripts describing the genetic analysis of plant resistance to pathogens are welcome. New advances in cereal crop genomics and breeding, with the availability of the genome sequence for many cereal species, opens new opportunities that were considered unthinkable just a few years ago to provide breeding with new approaches to improve plant resistance. The impact of fungal pathogens on crop production can also be limited through the correct use of agronomic practices. Manuscripts focused on these aspects are also welcome for this Special Issue. Last but not least, studies about epidemiology, especially in relation to the cultivars adopted by farmers, are very useful to understand the diffusion and evolution of the races, and to adopt suitable solutions, including the choice of the cultivar carrying specific R genes, to limit their impact on crop production. For all of these aspects, manuscripts are welcome which should report information or viewpoints of outstanding novelty.

Dr. Anna M. Mastrangelo
Dr. Elisabetta Mazzucotelli
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • cereal crops
  • fungal pathogens
  • functional genomics
  • resistance breeding
  • crop management

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 3825 KiB  
Article
Genome-Wide Identification and Characterization of Fusarium graminearum-Responsive lncRNAs in Triticum aestivum
by Xiaoxin Duan, Xiushi Song, Jianxin Wang and Mingguo Zhou
Genes 2020, 11(10), 1135; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes11101135 - 27 Sep 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2799
Abstract
Although the war between wheat and Fusarium has been widely investigated for years, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), which have been proven to regulate important processes in the development and stress responses of plants, are still poorly known in wheat against Fusarium. Herein, we [...] Read more.
Although the war between wheat and Fusarium has been widely investigated for years, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), which have been proven to regulate important processes in the development and stress responses of plants, are still poorly known in wheat against Fusarium. Herein, we systematically reveal the roles of wheat lncRNAs in the process of Fusarium graminearum infection by high-throughput RNA sequencing. Well over 4130 of the total 4276 differentially expressed lncRNAs were already specifically expressed at 12 h postinoculation (hpi), but only 89 of these were specifically expressed at 24 hpi, indicating that the initial stage was the crucial stage for lncRNA-mediated gene regulation of wheat defense against F. graminearum. Target analysis showed the lncRNAs participated in various biological stress processes and had exclusive regulation models at different infection stages. Further H2O2 accumulation and protein ubiquitination assays supported this idea. Moreover, two lncRNAs (XLOC_302848 and XLOC_321638) were identified as Fusarium seedling blight resistance candidates by lncRNA-target expression pattern validation, and two lncRNAs (XLOC_113815, XLOC_123624) were Fusarium head blight resistance potential regulators by cross-validating the RNAseq data with the refined meta-QTL of wheat FHB resistance. These findings extend our knowledge on wheat lncRNAs response to F. graminearum attack and provide new insights for the functional and molecular research of future interactions between wheat and Fusarium. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resistance to Fungal Diseases in Cereals)
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19 pages, 2332 KiB  
Article
Large-Scale Cloning and Comparative Analysis of TaNAC Genes in Response to Stripe Rust and Powdery Mildew in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)
by Shikai Lv, Huan Guo, Min Zhang, Qiaohui Wang, Hong Zhang and Wanquan Ji
Genes 2020, 11(9), 1073; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes11091073 - 12 Sep 2020
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3412
Abstract
The NAM, ATAF1/2, and CUC2 (NAC) transcription factors (TFs) constitute the largest plant-specific TF superfamily, and play important roles in various physiological processes, including stress responses. Stripe rust and powdery mildew are the most damaging of the fungal diseases that afflict wheat ( [...] Read more.
The NAM, ATAF1/2, and CUC2 (NAC) transcription factors (TFs) constitute the largest plant-specific TF superfamily, and play important roles in various physiological processes, including stress responses. Stripe rust and powdery mildew are the most damaging of the fungal diseases that afflict wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). However, studies on Triticum aestivum NAC (TaNAC)s’ role in resistance to the two diseases are still limited, especially in an overall comparative analysis of TaNACs responding or not to fungal stress. In the present study, 186 TaNAC transcripts were obtained from the resistant hexaploid wheat line N9134 under fungal stress, and 180 new transcripts were submitted to GenBank. Statistical results show that 35.1% (54/154) of TaNAC genes responded to stripe rust and powdery mildew in the seedling stage. “Abnormal” coding transcripts of differentially expressed (DE)-TaNAC genes in wheat responding to fungal stress were found in a significantly higher proportion (24/117 vs. 8/69, p = 0.0098) than in non-DE-NACs. This hinted that the alternative splicing of TaNAC genes was active in transcriptional or post-transcriptional regulation during plant-pathogen interactions. Full-length NAC proteins were classified into nine groups via phylogenetic analysis. Multiple-sequence alignment revealed diversity in the C-terminal structural organization, but the differentially expressed gene (DEG)-encoding proteins enriched in Subgroups VI and VII were conserved, with WV[L/V]CR amino acid residues in Motif 7 following the NAM domain. Our data that showed TaNAC TFs responded to fungal disease, which was affected by expression levels and by the regulation of multifarious transcript variants. These data for TaNAC responses to stripe rust and/or powdery mildew and their numerous structural variants provide a good resource for NAC function–mechanism analysis in the context of biotic-stress tolerance in wheat. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resistance to Fungal Diseases in Cereals)
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