The influence of carotenoid biosynthesis modification on the Fusarium culmorum and Fusarium oxysporum resistance in flax

Abstract Flax engineering to yield increased resistance to pathogens is the goal of this study. Since carotenoids act as antioxidants it is thus postulated that the accumulation of a higher quantity of these compounds in the transgenic plants might improve their resistance to pathogen infection. Our approach was based on the generation of transgenic flax overproducing carotene and analysis of its susceptibility to Fusarium infection. For transformation bacterial gene – crtB was used. As expected, transgenic plants showed increased resistance against pathogen infection. The impact of carotenoids on plant resistance to infection was verified by generation and analysis of transgenic flax with decreased content of carotene. The transgenic plants were obtained by suppression of endogenous flax gene coding for lycopene β-cyclase. Plant analysis revealed decrease in carotene content, however, an unexpected increase in resistance against Fusarium infection was detected. Further analysis of metabolites in the plants revealed that an increase in accumulation of other terpenoids and tocopherols, squalene and menthol were among them. Thus, it is suggested that repression of carotene synthesis results in the redirecting of substrates to other branches of isoprenoids synthesis. We conclude that a general level of antioxidants rather than the presence of any particular compound is the most important factor in resistance of the flax plant to pathogen infection.