French and Chinese researchers have discovered that there is a “form of social immunity” in plants. By exchanging, they transform themselves to become stronger in the face of illnesses.
What if we had found the natural solution to eradicate plant diseases? In any case, this is what the study published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology indicates on September 12. According to researchers, there is a “form of social immunity” in plants.
Specialists from the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRAE), the Institut Agro Montpellier, CIRAD, the CNRS and the Yunnan Agricultural University (China) analyzed the behavior of wheat and rice in the face of aggression of a pathogenic fungus.
By exchanging information, plants transform to become more resistant to external aggression. Sometimes, this mutual assistance reduces the plant’s susceptibility to diseases by almost 90%, that is to say as much as their own resistance genes.
“We had already observed in social animals what we call group immunity”, reminds the Parisian Jean-Benoît Morel, research director at Inrae and specialist in plant physiology. In other words, to prevent the spread of certain viruses, certain species increase their immune defenses to protect themselves and their group.
Plant resistance
The academics therefore wanted to study under controlled conditions 201 pairs of plants which combined two varieties of rice or two varieties of wheat. They then injected them with pathogenic fungi that attack the leaves and observed their susceptibility to the disease depending on whether they grew with an identical plant or a neighbor of another variety.
Result: In about 11% of same-species mixtures, plant-to-plant interactions reduce disease susceptibility. “Plants exchange signals in the soil which allow them to recognize each other. And when you mix two different varieties of the same species in the same pot, each becomes more resistant,” explains Jean Francois Morel on a daily basis. Proof, according to him, that “plants manage to talk to each other in a certain way”.
These results thus highlight the advantages of using this type of culture. More environmentally friendly methods which could, for example, reduce the use of pesticides and other chemical products.
Source: BFM TV
