J (Jaap-Jan) Willig, MSc

Root plasticity: key to nematode tolerant plants?

Low levels of infection by cyst nematodes on some resistant crop varieties result in significant loss in yield, while other heavily infected susceptible varieties show hardly any symptoms at all.

This suggests that some plants tolerate biotic stress by plant parasitic nematodes better than others. We hypothesize that tolerant plants accommodate nematode infections by altering the architecture of their root system. To understand this, we study different Arabidopsis lines with mutations in root development.