Hidden fungus lets grass grow fast and stay pest-resistant
Bastías DA, Zhang W, Gundel PE, Mace WJ, Prakash S
Plant Signaling
The turfgrass and pasture grasses under your feet often carry an invisible fungal partner that's quietly doing pest control, which is why some lawns and fields shrug off insect damage that devastates others.
Plants usually face a tough choice: grow big and fast, or spend energy defending against pests, but not both. Scientists found that a fungus living inside ryegrass breaks that rule by making its own insect-fighting chemicals, so the grass can grow quickly after a growth-hormone boost without becoming easier prey for aphids. When the fungus couldn't make those chemicals, the growth boost left the grass defenseless, proving the fungus itself is the secret ingredient.
Key Findings
Gibberellin hormone treatment increased aphid susceptibility in endophyte-free plants and in plants with a fungal strain unable to make indole diterpene alkaloids, but not in plants with alkaloid-producing fungal strains.
GA treatment altered the fungus's alkaloid chemistry, reducing epoxyjanthitrem alkaloid levels and fungal mycelial biomass, while boosting plant hormones ABA, salicylic acid, and jasmonic acid.
GA treatment shifted gene expression toward growth (e.g., YUCCA2, GA2ox3) and away from photosynthesis (e.g., RBCS1), and also changed soil bacterial communities, increasing growth-promoting taxa like Bryobacter.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A fungus living inside ryegrass lets the plant grow faster without becoming more vulnerable to pests, because the fungus makes insect-repelling chemicals that compensate for the trade-off plants normally face between growing quickly and defending themselves.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Fungal endophytes relieve the growth-defence trade-off of their plant hosts through the production of bioactive alkaloids.
A central paradigm in plant biology is that there is a trade-off between growth and defence. We propose that Epichloë fungal endophytes relieve this trade-off in plants by the fungal-derived produc...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Lolium perenne, common name perennial ryegrass, English ryegrass, winter ryegrass, or ray grass, is a grass from the family Poaceae. It is native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa, but is widely cultivated and naturalised around the world.