Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences publishes latest research results in New Phytologist

Recently, an innovative team from the Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences published a paper entitled "Stemborer-induced rice plant volatiles boost direct and indirect resistance in neighboring plants" in New Phytologist. The research paper entitled "Stemborer-induced rice plant volatiles boost direct and indirect resistance in neighboring plants" was published in New Phytologist.

Rice is an important food crop in China, which is usually grown intensively and in close contact between plants. Therefore, herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) may play an important role in intercropping relationships between rice plants, but studies on HIPVs-mediated information exchange between rice plants are rare. In recent years, the team of the Ecological Safety Evaluation and Utilization of Pest-Resistant Crops (ESECC) has systematically analyzed the role of HIPVs in regulating the defense response of neighboring rice plants by using the tri-trophic relationship between rice, HIPVs and HIPVs as a research system. The results showed that rice plants exposed to HIPVs induced by HIPVs expressed jasmonic acid (JA) and protease inhibitor (PI) pathway-related genes more rapidly and at significantly higher levels than those exposed to healthy rice volatiles, which significantly inhibited the growth and development of HIPV larvae after subsequent HIPV infestation. In addition, the release of volatiles from rice plants exposed to HIPVs was significantly increased after infestation by dinoflagellate, especially the release of some volatiles (e.g. linalool, DMNT, etc.) that have a priming effect on dinoflagellate panicle callus peaks was significantly elevated, enhancing the indirect defense response of adjacent rice plants. This study systematically and deeply reveals the regulatory mechanism of direct and indirect insect resistance defense of neighboring rice plants by diatom borer infestation-induced rice volatiles, from biological phenomena, to the expression of related rice defense genes, to the accumulation of specific defense substances.

The Institute of Plant Protection (IPP), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAS) is the first author of this paper, and Chengcheng Yao (currently a Ph.D. student at China Agricultural University) is the first author of this paper.