Phloem feeding insects, such as the whitefly Bemisia tabaci, are a major pests in agriculture and cause massive yield losses. Due to their stealthy feeding style, they penetrate the phloem with their stylet without causing cell damage. This allows them to bypass most of the plants defence mechanisms. Although food quality plays an important role in animal development, research on whitefly resistance in tomato has mainly focused on the trichomes instead of the phloem they feed from.
The underlying mechanism of resistance based on reduced whitefly nymphal development, observed in Solanum chmielewskii.
Here we make a case that the presence of a vasculature-based factor in the wild tomato accession Solanum chmielewskii LA1840 causes Bemisia tabaci nymphs feeding from this host to display hampered development compared to their performance on Solanum lycopersicum cv Moneymaker.
This work highlights the importance of phloem composition in the plant-phloem feeder interactions which could be applied in breeding for phloem feeder resistance in tomato, and other crops.
- Photo of B. tabaci nymphal stages
- Whitefly development bioassay on four S. chmielewskii accessions and the cultivar
- Whitefly resistance phenotype on grafts
- Whitefly resistance phenotype on introgression lines
- Untargeted metabolomics on leaf material
- Riboflavin concentrations in phloem of four S. chmielewskii accessions
- Effect of modulated riboflavin levels on whitefly resistance
- Means and standard errors corresponding to Fig. 2
- Means and standard errors corresponding to Fig. 4
- Means and standard errors corresponding to Fig. 6
- Means and standard errors corresponding to Fig. 7