Project Seeks to Help Plants Fight Pathogens in Rising Temperatures

A global project seeks to help plants better fight pathogens as temperatures rise. Courtney Leisner, assistant professor at the school of plant and environmental sciences at Virginia Polytechnic University, is part of this global project, which seeks to study bacterial spot. Xanthomonas, the pathogen that causes bacterial spot, is a significant threat to tomato and pepper growers worldwide. The pathogen can infect nearly 400 different plant species, and there is no known cure.

“We have existing data to show that when pepper plants that are resistant to Xanthomonas are inoculated with Xanthomonas and exposed to ozone stress that the resistance breaks down,” she says. “This made us interested in understanding how temperature would impact the virulence of Xanthomonas and the ability of pepper to mount a defense response to Xanthomonas.

She says preliminary research shows that as pepper plants are exposed to a pathogen or elevated ozone levels alone, the plants respond differently than when exposed to combined stress of a pathogen and elevated ozone levels.