title: Pathogen infection drives patterns of nutrient resorption in citrus plants.
abstract: Nutrient resorption processes in the plants infected by pathogen remain poorly understood. Huanglongbing (HLB) is a destructive disease of citrus. HLB-pathogen 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' grows specifically in the phloem of hosts and may cause problems in the plant vascular system after infection. Therefore, it brings a great concern about the phloem nutrient transport and nutrient intra-cycling in HLB-affected plants. We investigated the effects of 'Ca. L. asiaticus' infection on nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations and resorption in different citrus species (i.e. Citrus reticulata, Citrus limon and Citrus maxima). HLB-pathogen infection had distinctive impacts on nutrient resorption in different species. P resorption efficiency substantially decreased in infected C. reticulata plants relative to the healthy plants in summer, which may account for the marked decrease in the average fruit yield. P resorption was more efficient in infected C. limon plants than in the healthy plants. However, for C. maxima plants, HLB had no significant effects on N:P ratio in live leaves and resorption efficiency as well as on fruit yield. Keeping efficient internal nutrient cycling can be a strategy of citrus species being tolerant to HLB.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors.forename: Jirong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Horticultural Biotechnology, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350002, China.
authors.forename: Chunzhen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors.forename: Junjie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China.
authors.forename: Qibing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D002957:Citrus / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000382:microbiology*; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D009584:Nitrogen / Q000378:metabolism; D010758:Phosphorus / Q000378:metabolism; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000382:microbiology; D018515:Plant Leaves
chemical_list: D010758:Phosphorus; D009584:Nitrogen