Abstract
Cereal crop plants such as maize and sorghum are constantly being attacked by a great variety of pathogens that cause large economic losses. Plants protect themselves against pathogens by synthesizing antimicrobial compounds, which include phytoalexins. In this review we summarize the current knowledge on phytoalexins produced by sorghum (luteolinidin, apigeninidin) and maize (zealexin, kauralexin, DIMBOA and HDMBOA). For these molecules, we highlight biosynthetic pathways, known intermediates, proposed enzymes, and mechanisms of elicitation. Finally, we discuss the involvement of phytoalexins in plant resistance and their possible application in technology, medicine and agriculture. For those whose world is round we tried to set the scene in the context of a hypothetical football game in which pathogens fight with phytoalexins on the different playing fields provided by maize and sorghum.
Highlights
Cereal crop plants such as maize and sorghum are constantly being attacked by a great variety of pathogens that cause large economic losses
Among the plant-produced antimicrobials that are induced upon pathogen attack are the phytoalexins, which are compounds of low molecular weight that are induced by stress [14,15,16]
A mixture of these characteristic reddish- and orange-colored compounds are known to be synthesized in the cytoplasm of epidermal sorghum cells infected with Colletotrichum sublineolum where they accumulate in initially colorless inclusion bodies
Summary
The world population increases by around 1% every year [1]. The rising number of people necessitates an ongoing expansion in food production. The production of maize, the most cultivated cereal in the world, is only increasing at a rate of 1.6% per year, while the rate increase necessary to match world population growth would be 2.4% [3]. Among the main advantages of this plant are its high draught and heat tolerance, its high sugar content and the high yields of forage biomass that can be obtained per unit of land. Due to these advantages, sorghum is cultivated especially in hot and arid regions, like Nigeria and India, as well as USA and China [2]. The plant became even more important for the food industry, because it can be used to produce gluten-free products [6]
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