Abstract
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation has emerged as an environmental cue with potential uses to enhance plant protection against arthropod pests in agriculture. UV can augment constitutive and inducible plant defenses against herbivorous arthropods. Here we investigated whether application of supplemental UV to chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum × morifolium Ramat) cuttings during their rooting phase enhanced plant resistance to an important insect pest, Western flower thrips (Frankliniella occidentalis). For this, we analyzed how several daily UV exposure times affected plant damage by thrips on three different chrysanthemum cultivars. The most effective UV dose and responsive cultivar were further used to determine the UV effects on host plant preference by thrips, leaf metabolome and the induction of jasmonic acid (JA)-associated defenses. Our results showed that while short UV daily exposure times increased chrysanthemum resistance to thrips, longer exposure times had the opposite effect. Furthermore, we showed that UV-mediated induction of chrysanthemum resistance to thrips was genotype dependent and can persist after the end of the of the UV treatment. Yet, this induction was not transferred to the next generation from mother plants to cuttings. Nontargeted metabolomic, enzymatic and hormone analyses further revealed that UV slightly affected the leaf metabolome of chrysanthemum plants, and it enhanced the induction of JA-associated signaling after thrips infestation. Taken together, our results suggest that supplemental UV might modulate both constitutive and inducible chrysanthemum defenses against thrips.
Highlights
Plants possess an extraordinary capacity to respond and adapt to their changing environment
We demonstrated that application of supplemental UV radiation enhances chrysanthemum resistance to thrips
We showed that this effect was genotype and UV dosage dependent and persisted after the light treatment finalized
Summary
Plants possess an extraordinary capacity to respond and adapt to their changing environment. Fluctuations in light influence plant physiology, and plant adaptive responses to biotic stresses, modulating the plant interactions with herbivorous enemies. Both light quantity and quality have been shown to alter plant constitutive and inducible defenses against arthropod herbivores (Escobar-Bravo et al 2018, 2019a). UV-C radiation is highly energetic (λ ≤ 280 nm), and it is strongly absorbed by oxygen and ozone in the stratosphere, being absent in the terrestrial sunlight. UV-A (λ 315–400 nm) is not attenuated by atmospheric ozone and, together with UV-B, represents an important environmental light signal regulating many photomorphogenic responses in plants (Bjorn 1994; Robson et al 2019)
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