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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1472536
This article is part of the Research Topic Insights In Plant-Pathogen Interactions: 2023 View all 18 articles

A putative gene-for-gene relationship between Erwinia amylovora effector gene eop1 and FB_Mar12 resistance locus of Malus ×arnoldiana accession MAL0004

Provisionally accepted
Ofere Francis Emeriewen Ofere Francis Emeriewen 1*Holger Zetzsche Holger Zetzsche 2Thomas Wolfgang Wöhner Thomas Wolfgang Wöhner 1Henryk Flachowsky Henryk Flachowsky 1Andreas Peil Andreas Peil 1
  • 1 Institute for Breeding Research on Fruit Types, Federal Research Center for Cultivated Plants, Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), Dresden, Germany
  • 2 Institute for Resistance Research and Stress Tolerance, Julius Kühn-Institute, Quedlinburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The bacterial pathogen, Erwinia amylovora, causes fire blight on rosaceous plants including apple and its wild relatives. The pathogen uses the type III secretion pathogenicity island to inject effector proteins such as Eop1 into host plants leading to disease phenotype in susceptible genotypes. On the other hand, resistant genotypes possess quantitative resistance associated with genomic regions and/or R-gene-mediated qualitative resistance to withstand the pathogen. In Malus, strong resistance is found in some wild species accession for example in Malus ×arnoldiana accession MAL0004. The resistance locus FB_Mar12, previously identified on linkage group 12 (LG12) of MAL0004, is one of two gene loci in Malus proven to withstand highly virulent North American strains of E. amylovora, suggesting the influence of a major gene, with a few candidate genes proposed within the FB_Mar12 region. In this report, we provide evidence that this gene locus is completely broken-down by a mutant strain of the E. amylovora effector protein Eop1 (Δeop1) following artificial shoot inoculations of an 'Idared' × MAL0004 F1 progeny set, indicating a gene-for-gene interaction. Interestingly, Δeop1 does not overcome the resistance of FB_Mar12 donor MAL0004 itself, but only the QTL on LG12, an indication that other resistance factors, possibly QTLs/genes are contributing to the fire blight resistance of MAL0004.

    Keywords: Apple wild species, Fire blight, resistance QTL, resistance-breakdown, Malus hosts

    Received: 29 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Emeriewen, Zetzsche, Wöhner, Flachowsky and Peil. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ofere Francis Emeriewen, Institute for Breeding Research on Fruit Types, Federal Research Center for Cultivated Plants, Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), Dresden, Germany

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