Suppression of Fusarium graminearum penetration by plant activators and the real-time bioimaging analysis

Abstract

  Infection with Fusarium graminearum causes not only yield and quality losses of wheat and barley but also contamination with mycotoxins. There are no commercial cultivars that show strong resistance to F. graminearum and, moreover, the emergence of fungicide-resistant strains has been reported. Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) has been found to be effective in inducing the resistance against F. graminearum as a plant activator. However, it is not known how NMN treatment affects the penetration behavior of F. graminearum. In this study, we established a real-time bioimaging system to analyze the penetration behavior of F. graminearum, and investigated the effect of NMN treatment on it. When treated with NMN, the mycelium did not grow in a straight line and behaved as if it had failed to penetrate the host cell and was repeatedly changing direction to find another penetration site.