Impact of concurrent drought stress and pathogen infection on plants

Abstract

Concurrent abiotic and biotic stress situations greatly limit the crop productivity. The global climate change is predicted to bring forth the frequent incidences of concurrent stresses, predominantly drought and pathogen infections. Thus, understanding the impact of drought on plant–pathogen interaction is important. In this chapter, we review the recent studies that focus on the effect of concurrent drought and pathogen infection on plants. These studies indicate that concurrent stress conditions lead to the activation of unique combat pathways that are otherwise not elicited under independent stresses. Plant responses, thus, seem to be adaptively tailored for combating the combined stresses. Here, we focus on the impact of drought stress on plant–pathogen relations and highlight the different ways by which plant–pathogen interactions are modulated at physiological and molecular level. Various studies reviewed in this chapter show that the stress combinations should be considered as a “unique stress” and a better understanding of plant responses to these conditions is needed. Therefore, we propose that further efforts should be directed to identify the potential pathways conferring concurrent stress tolerance.