The Arabidopsis NPR1 gene confers broad-spectrum disease resistance in strawberry

Although strawberry is an economically important fruit crop worldwide, production of strawberry is limited by its susceptibility to a wide range of pathogens and the lack of major commercial cultivars with high levels of resistance to multiple pathogens. The objective of this study is to ectopically express the Arabidopsis thaliana NPR1 gene (AtNPR1) in the diploid strawberry Fragaria vesca L. and to test transgenic plants for disease resistance. AtNPR1 is a key positive regulator of the long-lasting broad-spectrum resistance known as systemic acquired resistance (SAR) and has been shown to confer resistance to a number of pathogens when overexpressed in Arabidopsis or ectopically expressed in several crop species. We show that ectopic expression of AtNPR1 in strawberry increases resistance to anthracnose, powdery mildew, and angular leaf spot, which are caused by different fungal or bacterial pathogens. The increased resistance is related to the relative expression levels of AtNPR1 in the transgenic plants. In contrast to Arabidopsis plants overexpressing AtNPR1, which grow normally and do not constitutively express defense genes, the strawberry transgenic plants are shorter than non-transformed controls, and most of them fail to produce runners and fruits. Consistently, most of the transgenic lines constitutively express the defense gene FvPR5, suggesting that the SAR activation mechanisms in strawberry and Arabidopsis are different. Nevertheless, our results indicate that overexpression of AtNPR1 holds the potential for generation of broad-spectrum disease resistance in strawberry.