Control of Peach Leaf Curl with Foliar Applications of Plant Immunity Inducers and Insights in Elicitation of Defense Responses against Taphrina deformans

Abstract

Taphrina deformans is the causal agent of leaf curl, a serious peach disease which causes significant losses in peach production worldwide. Nowadays, in order to control plant diseases, it is necessary to adopt novel and low-cost alternatives to conventional chemical fungicides. These promising strategies are targeted at eliciting host defense mechanisms via priming the host through the consecutive application of plant immunity inducers prior to pathogen challenge. In this study, we investigated whether chitosan or yeast cell wall extracts could provide enhanced tolerance against leaf curl in two-season field trials. Furthermore, we addressed the possible molecular mechanisms involved beyond the priming of immune responses by monitoring the induction of key defense-related genes. The efficacy of spraying treatments against peach leaf curl with both inducers was significantly higher compared to the untreated control, showing efficacy in reducing disease severity of up to 62.6% and 73.9% for chitosan and yeast cell wall extracts, respectively. The application of chitosan in combination with copper hydroxide was more efficient in reducing disease incidence and severity, showing efficacy values in the range of 79.5–93.18%. Peach plantlets were also spray-treated with immunity inducers three times prior to leaf inoculation with T. deformans blastospores in their yeast phase. The relative expression levels of nine key defense and priming genes, including those encoding members of pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins and hub genes associated with hormone biosynthesis, were monitored by RT-qPCR across three days after inoculation (dai). The results indicate that pre-treatments with these plant immunity inducers activated the induction of genes involved in salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonate (JA) defense signaling pathways that may offer systemic resistance, coupled with the upregulation of genes conferring direct antimicrobial effects. Our experiments suggest that these two plant immunity inducers could constitute useful components towards the effective control of T. deformans in peach crops.