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Asked by to Amelia, Clem, Izzy, Sarah on 14 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
Question: Can plants catch diseases like how humans do?
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Isabel Webb answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Plants can get infected and get diseases just like people do. However, plants have a different way of dealing with infection. Humans have white blood cells, which recognise an invader in the blood and then send out antibodies and engulf the infecting microbe and kill it.
Plants have a different system. Plants have ‘effectors’ on the surface of cells which recognise an invading bacteria and this triggers an immune response. The plant usually responds by killing the infected area of the plant before infection can spread. For example, if a leaf was infected, it would send out signals to the rest of the plant that it is infected. The plant will then cut off the food and water supplies to and from the leaf, letting the leaf die but the plant live. Plants can grow new leaves easily, so they can easily kill off parts of themselves. Humans can’t do this – so we have a different way of fighting bacteria or infection off.
Different plants have receptors for different bacteria. This means that they can only fight off certain infections – but at the same time, they can only be infected by certain infections too. A lot of research is done to try and understand if we can help prevent plant infections, for example using GM technology to add new receptors to the cells. This has been shown to work in defending potatoes from potato blight, a terrible disease of potatoes that led to many people in Ireland 300 years ago running out of food to eat. However, GM technology is not allowed in the UK yet – so we can’t yet help protect potatoes this way on farms.
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Sarah Harvey answered on 14 Mar 2014:
The short answer is yes!
So plants can be infected by bacteria, viruses, fungi and fungus like organisms called oomycetes. One main difference is that the majority of animal diseases come from bacteria and viruses whereas a lot of important plant diseases are from fungi and oomycetes, for example Phytophthora infestans which causes potato blight (aka late blight) is caused by an oomycete.
When we get infected, we often catch things through our mouths or noses, or though cuts. It’s the same for plants except instead of noses organisms can get in through their stomata, or through a wound on the plant. Like us, they also have a way of detecting the invading organism and defending against it. They don’t have antibodies and white blood cells like we do, but they do recognise microorganisms and make antimicrobial compounds. They also have a defines mechanism which we don’t use which is programmed cell death – they kill off their own infected cells! This is because if the fungus or whatever’s causing disease needs the plant alive to get nutrients then the dead cells will form a barrier and stop infection, pretty clever 🙂
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Clemence Bonnot answered on 16 Mar 2014:
Yes plants catch diseases. In fact all living thing catch diseases, even bacteria have there viruses and these are extremely dangerous for them and can kill them… this is the same for plants.
In plants, like in animals, some diseases are provoked by viruses, other by bacterial infection of fungal infection and some are even just because the plant does not get enough food or is poisoned by some particular nutrients (not good for it or not good when absorbed in too much quantity) present in the soil where it growth….
You can spot viruses invasion looking at the leaves of some plants. If you are careful you can see in some leaves black dots like burnt zone. This burns are the way the plant fight the invaders, it is trying to isolate it from the healthy other part of the plants.
Plant can also get cancer, often provoked by a bacterial infection. You recognise the zone of the plant that is infected because their is a production of a mass of tissue that is not a normal organ like a branch or a leave or a root… But for plant these cancer are not deadly as plants have the ability to constantly regrow the organ it needs to survive contrary to animals. -
Amelia Frizell-Armitage answered on 16 Mar 2014:
Yes plants can get diseases! In fact all living things can! This is because bacteria and viruses are probably some of the most clever things on the earth. Because they are so clever and so small they have evolved to live just about anywhere.. the desert, the arctic and on (or in!) all living things.
Sarah is a plant doctor so probably best placed to answer this question for you. However, I do know a bit about a disease called wheat stripe rust – one of the worst wheat diseases there is. It is called this because the fungus it is caused by forms stripes of orange down the leaves that look like rust. The fungus produces spores, which are like egg cells, that infect the plant when the fall on the leaf. Once a crop of wheat is infected with the fungus it’s ability to grow is really reduced and if it gets really bad the plant can die. Sometimes farmers can lose up to 50% of their crop, so lose out on a lot of money. Therefore there is a lot of research happening to try and produce wheat plants that are resistant to this disease both by normal breeding but also by genetic modification.
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