Environmental maternal effects mediate the resistance of maritime pine to biotic stress

PLoS One. 2013 Jul 26;8(7):e70148. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0070148. Print 2013.

Abstract

The resistance to abiotic stress is increasingly recognised as being impacted by maternal effects, given that environmental conditions experienced by parent (mother) trees affect stress tolerance in offspring. We hypothesised that abiotic environmental maternal effects may also mediate the resistance of trees to biotic stress. The influence of maternal environment and maternal genotype and the interaction of these two factors on early resistance of Pinus pinaster half-sibs to the Fusarium circinatum pathogen was studied using 10 mother genotypes clonally replicated in two contrasting environments. Necrosis length of infected seedlings was 16% shorter in seedlings grown from favourable maternal environment seeds than in seedlings grown from unfavourable maternal environment seeds. Damage caused by F. circinatum was mediated by maternal environment and maternal genotype, but not by seed mass. Mechanisms unrelated to seed provisioning, perhaps of epigenetic nature, were probably involved in the transgenerational plasticity of P. pinaster, mediating its resistance to biotic stress. Our findings suggest that the transgenerational resistance of pines due to an abiotic stress may interact with the defensive response of pines to a biotic stress.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Environment
  • Fusarium / physiology*
  • Genotype
  • Pinus / genetics*
  • Pinus / microbiology*
  • Pinus / physiology
  • Plant Diseases / genetics*
  • Plant Diseases / microbiology*
  • Seedlings / genetics
  • Seedlings / microbiology
  • Seedlings / physiology

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) Project RTA2007-100 and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación Español National Research Project FENOPIN (AGL2012-40151-C03-01) and co-financed by EUFEDER. LS and MV were supported by a DOC-INIA grant at Centro de Investigación Forestal de Lourizán and by a FPU-PREDOC grant from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación Español, respectively. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.