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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fort Collins, Colorado » Center for Agricultural Resources Research » Agricultural Genetic Resources Preservation Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #392309
Research Project: Efficient and Effective Preservation and Management of Plant and Microbial Genetic Resource Collections

Location: Agricultural Genetic Resources Preservation Research

Title: Micrografting: An old dog plays new tricks in plant obligate pathogens

Author
item WANG, M R - Northwest A&f University
item BI, W L - University Of Guelph
item REN, L - Shanghai Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item MA, X Y - Northwest A&f University
item ZHANG, D - Northwest A&f University
item Volk, Gayle
item WANG, Q C - Northwest A&f University
item ZAHNG, A-LING - Northwest A&f University

Submitted to: Plant Disease
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/18/2022
Publication Date: 3/29/2022
Citation: Wang, M., Bi, W., Ren, L., Ma, X., Zhang, D., Volk, G.M., Wang, Q., Zahng, A. 2022. Micrografting: An old dog plays new tricks in plant obligate pathogens. Plant Disease. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-03-22-0475-FE.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-03-22-0475-FE

Interpretive Summary: Plants in tissue culture are usually introduced by placing a piece of sterile plant tissue onto agar medium that contains the necessary nutrients, hormones, and sugar for growth. There are instances whereby plants are propagated in tissue culture using micrografting methods. Shoot tips or meristems are excised from one plant and placed on rootstocks of another cultivar growing in culture medium. The use of micrografting has been key for the development of citrus cryopreservation methods. Micrografting has many applications in plant pathology, including a role in pathogen eradication techniques, as a way to introduce pathogens into plant tissues to screen for resistance, and as a way to study scion-rootstock interactions. This manuscript describes applications of micrografting in plant pathogen research and proposes the possibility of viroid elimination using reduced temperatures, cryotherapy, and micrografting.

Technical Abstract: Micrografting, which was developed almost 50 years ago, has long been used in studies including virus eradication, micropropagation, regeneration, rejuvenation and graft compatibility (old tricks). Recently, micrografting has been used for studies of long-distance trafficking and signaling of molecules between scions and rootstocks. The graft transmissiveness of plant obligate pathogens, such as viruses, viroids and phytoplasmas, facilitated the use of micrografting to study biological indexing and pathogen transmission, pathogen-induced graft incompatibility, and screening for the pathogen resistance (new tricks), and advances have been made over the last twenty years. The present study provides comprehensive information on the said subjects. Finally, prospects are proposed to direct further studies.