The relationship between basal and induced resistance in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Plants are constantly exposed to potentially pathogenic micro-organisms. They possess an extensive array of passive and active defense mechanisms, and only a small proportion of micro-organisms are capable of infecting the plant and causing disease. Plant resistance can be broadly defined as the plant's ability to suppress or retard the damaging activity of a pathogen. The most common type of resistance is nonhost resistance. This type of resistance protects the plant entirely from infection by most potential pathogens, and is manifested as an inability of the pathogen to cause disease upon contact with any individual of a particular plant species. In such an interaction, the pathogen is nonpathogenic.