Eugenol confers resistance to Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) by regulating the expression of SlPer1 in tomato plants

• Eugenol showed effective anti-TYLCV activity.
• Eugenol could stimulate plant immune signals.
• Eugenol strongly induced the expression of a host specific R gene SlPer1.
• SlPer1 could be differentially regulated by multiple defensive signaling.

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) is one of the most devastating plant diseases, and poses a significant agricultural concern because of the lack of an efficient control method. Eugenol is a plant-derived natural compound that has been widely used as a food additive and in medicine. In the present study, we demonstrated the potential of eugenol to enhance the resistance of tomato plants to TYLCV. The anti-TYLCV efficiency of eugenol was significantly higher than that of moroxydine hydrochloride (MH), a widely used commercial antiviral agent. Eugenol application stimulated the production of endogenous nitric oxide (NO) and salicylic acid (SA) in tomato plants. The full-length cDNA of SlPer1, which has been suggested to be a host R gene specific to TYLCV, was isolated from tomato plants. A sequence analysis suggested that SlPer1 might be a nucleobase-ascorbate transporter (NAT) belonging to the permease family. The transcript levels of SlPer1 increased markedly in response to treatment with eugenol or TYLCV inoculation. The results of this study also showed that SlPer1 expression was strongly induced by SA, MeJA (jasmonic acid methyl ester), and NO. Thus, we propose that the increased transcription of SlPer1 contributed to the high anti-TYLCV efficiency of eugenol, which might involve in the generation of endogenous SA and NO. Such findings provide the basis for the development of eugenol as an environmental-friendly agricultural antiviral agent.

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