Oligochitosan: A plant diseases vaccine-A review

Chitosan is one of the most abundant carbohydrate biopolymers in the world. Oligochitosan prepared from chitosan is a potent plant immunity regulator. The efficacy of oligochitosan on plant disease control is presented in this review. This paper summarizes recent progress made on oligochitosan activated plant innate immunity, including: signal perception; signal transduction: oligochitosan response genes and proteins; oligochitosan induced defense-related secondary metabolites accumulation. Based on published papers and our former results, we deduce that the mode of oligochitosan act on plant is similar with general vaccines act on human and animals. So we conclude that oligochitosan is a plant disease vaccine. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.