Screening for interesting elicitors to protect wheat against Zymoseptoria tritici

Plants face an array of biotic and abiotic stresses in their environment, making it necessary to use various chemical inputs to maintain satisfactory yield. Today, conventional agriculture is evolving towards more sustainable practices, out of respect for human health and the environment. Elicitors are considered as promising biological control tools and draw major interest in IPM strategies. These plant-immunity triggering compounds, also called “stimulators of plant natural defenses”, induce a general and systemic resistance in the plant to various diseases.
Although numerous elicitors have already been identified and some of them reached the market since the late 1970s, further investigations are still required to better understand the mode of action of these molecules in the plant and ensure a consistent efficiency under various field conditions. Few elicitors have yet been successfully tested and formulated to protect crop plants such as wheat, which is cultivated over large areas in Europe.
This study focuses on the screening of ten potential elicitor products of various origins and structures to protect winter wheat against the fungal pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. Greenhouse trials were carried out to measure the ability of the different products to reduce disease foliar symptoms (necrosis, chlorosis and pycnidia). In addition, the phytotoxicity and biocide activities of these products were evaluated under greenhouse and laboratory conditions, respectively. The corresponding results will be presented and discussed with the perspective to choose the best elicitor candidates and to undertake investigations on the signaling pathway and the influence of environmental parameters on the elicitation capacity.