Induction of defence reactions in plants

Induced local resistance presumably involves the same mechanisms in the plants as resistance elicited during normal plant-pathogen interactions. In many cases resistance elicitors from pathogens have been found to be non-specific, i.e. unrelated to race-cultivar specificity. Thus, existence of specific resistance suppressors has been suggested to make the virulent races able to infect. In other cases specific resistance elicitors have been indicated to exist in a virulent races, by which the race specific resistance may be accomplished. At our Department resistance has been induced in the barley—powdery mildew interaction by use of double inoculation procedures. Both virulent and avirulent races of barley powdery mildew can induce resistance, but avirulent races show an increased resistance induction ability in relation to virulent races from 12 hours after inoculation. In barley plants wheat powdery mildew induced more resistance than barley powdery mildew 1 to 8 hours after inoculation. Induced resistance was mainly localized to the epidermal cells attacked by the inducer, but an effect was also present in the surrounding epidermal cells. The energetic consequences of resistance in barley to barley powdery mildew have been found to be reflected in an increased respiratory rate at the time of infection attempt. Further, these energy costs appeared to reduce grain yield by 7 %. The expression of resistance in barley is thought to involve de novo synthesis mRNAs and proteins, which makes it possible to apply gene technological methods to study induced resistance. Research of this kind is in progress at our Department, which hopefully will give information on the mechanisms of resistance triggering and resistance expression.