Abstract
Fusarium Head Blight is the most common fungal disease that strongly affects Triticum spp., reducing crop yield and leading to the accumulation of toxic metabolites. Several studies have investigated the plant metabolic response to counteract mycotoxins accumulation. However, information on the precise location where the defense mechanism is taking place is scarce. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the specific tissue distribution of defense metabolites in two Triticum species and use this information to postulate on the metabolites’ functional role, unlocking the “location-to-function” paradigm. To address this challenge, transversal cross-sections were obtained from the middle of the grains. They were analyzed using an atmospheric-pressure (AP) SMALDI MSI source (AP-SMALDI5 AF, TransMIT GmbH, Giessen, Germany) coupled to a Q Exactive HF (Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Bremen, Germany) orbital trapping mass spectrometer. Our result revealed the capability of (AP)-SMALDI MSI instrumentation to finely investigate the spatial distribution of wheat defense metabolites, such as hydroxycinnamic acid amides, oxylipins, linoleic and α-linoleic acids, galactolipids, and glycerolipids.
Highlights
Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), the most common fungal disease that strongly affectsTriticum spp., causes grain yield losses and an accumulation of toxic secondary metabolites called mycotoxins [1,2]
We reported the spatial distribution of plant defense metabolites involved in the fungal-plant cross-talk
Lipids and antifungal metabolites were finely located in infected vs. non-infected kernels thanks to the high-spatial resolution provided by (AP)-SMALDI mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) instrumentation
Summary
Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), the most common fungal disease that strongly affectsTriticum spp., causes grain yield losses and an accumulation of toxic secondary metabolites called mycotoxins [1,2]. The annual loss caused by this contaminant in farming and aquaculture industries is estimated to be about 1 billion metric tons of food [4,5] This scenario is expected to be exacerbated by climate change, due to the changing condition of temperature and humidity, favorable for fungal growth [6,7]. To tackle this challenge, the use of resistant cultivars able to mitigate the mycotoxins accumulation is considered the most promising approach [8,9]. This approach has extended our knowledge, revealing some biological pathways by which the plant interacts against fungal attacks
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