Research Projects - Felix Mauch's Group

Fields studies indicate that limited sulfur supply appears to negatively affect plant resistance to pathogens. To confirm this observation two pathosystems were developed and studied. Rape plants were grown on quartz sand with Hoagland nutritive solution containing different sulfur concentration. After six weeks plants showed no visible sulfur deficiency symptoms but a 10-fold reduction in total sulfur and glutathione content was observed between plants grown under normal sulfur supply and sulfur starved plants. Leaves of six weeks old plants were infected with two different pathogens: a Brassica specific pathogen Leptosphaeria maculans (ana. Phoma lingam) and a broad host range pathogen Botrytis cinerea. Lesion size was measured to monitor plant resistance level. Rape plants lacking sulfur clearly showed enhanced disease susceptibility with both pathogens. In a second step we are trying to find out if this enhanced disease susceptibility is a direct or indirect effect of sulfur deficiency and which kind of sulfur-containing compounds could be involved in this process.