Several Salmonella enterica outbreaks have been traced back to contaminated tomatoes. In this study, the internalization of S. enterica Typhimurium via tomato leaves was investigated as affected by surfactants and bacterial rdar morphotype, which was reported to be important for the environmental persistence and attachment of Salmonella to plants. Surfactants, especially Silwet L-77, promoted i...

The use of biological control agents could be a non-chemical alternative for management of Meloidogyne spp. [root-knot nematodes (RKN)], the most damaging plant-parasitic nematodes for horticultural crops worldwide. Pochonia chlamydosporia is a fungal parasite of RKN eggs that can colonize endophytically roots of several cultivated plant species, but in field applications the fungus shows a low...

the beet armyworm spodoptera exigua (hübner) is a serious and economically important pest of solanaceous crops worldwide. the nutritional indices of this pest on three host plants including pepper capsicum frutescens, eggplant solanum melongena and tomato solanum lycopersicum were determined under laboratory conditions at 26 ± 1 °c, 60 ± 5% rh and 16: 8 (l: d) h. the highest relative consumptio...

Salinity threatens productivity of economically important crops such as tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.). WRKY transcription factors appear, from a growing body of knowledge, as important regulators of abiotic stresses tolerance. Tomato SlWRKY3 is a nuclear protein binding to the consensus CGTTGACC/T W box. SlWRKY3 is preferentially expressed in aged organs, and is rapidly induced by NaCl, KCl,...

Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 is a pathogen of tomato and Arabidopsis that injects virulence effector proteins into host cells via a type III secretion system (TTSS). TTSS-deficient mutants have a Hrp- phenotype, that is, they cannot elicit the hypersensitive response (HR) in non-host plants or pathogenesis in host plants. Mutations in effector genes typically have weak virulence pheno...

The effects of 2 concentrations of kinetin, i.e., 2 and 4 mM together with 2 levels of drought stress, i.e., moderate (35% soil saturation capacity) and severe (20% soil saturation capacity) were investigated on the growth parameters of tomato including fresh and dry leaf weight, leaf number, leaf surface area, fruit number, fruit weight, and enzymatic antioxidants. To this end, first tomato pl...

Suppressive composts represent a sustainable approach to combat soilborne plant pathogens and an alternative to the ineffective chemical fungicides used against those. Nevertheless, suppressiveness to plant pathogens and reliability of composts are often inconsistent with unpredictable effects. While suppressiveness is usually attributed to the compost's microorganisms, the mechanisms governing...

Genetic studies in Arabidopsis established FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) as a key flower-promoting gene in photoperiodic systems. Grafting experiments established unequivocal one-to-one relations between SINGLE FLOWER TRUSS (SFT), a tomato homolog of FT, and the hypothetical florigen, in all flowering plants. Additional studies of SFT and SELF PRUNING (SP, homolog of TFL1), two antagonistic genes regu...

microbe-associated molecular patterns (mamps) play key roles as activators of the innate immune response in animals and, analogously, as elicitors of defense responses in plants. however, there are not much investigations concerning their real importance in plant resistance against pathogens. here we used derivatives of flagellin and ef-tu as two well-known mamps against some important fungal a...