Increasing the resilience of plant immunity to a warming climate

Extreme weather conditions associated with climate change affect many aspects of plant and animal life, including the response to infectious diseases. Production of salicylic acid (SA), a central plant defence hormone^1-3, is particularly vulnerable to suppression by short periods of hot weather above the normal plant growth temperature range via an unknown mechanism^4-7. Here we show that suppression of SA production in Arabidopsis thaliana at 28 °C is independent of PHYTOCHROME B^8,9 (phyB) and EARLY FLOWERING 3¹⁰ (ELF3), which regulate thermo-responsive plant growth and development. Instead, we found that formation of GUANYLATE BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE 3 (GBPL3) defence-activated biomolecular condensates¹¹ (GDACs) was reduced at the higher growth temperature. The altered GDAC formation in vivo is linked to impaired recruitment of GBPL3 and SA-associated Mediator subunits to the promoters of CBP60g and SARD1, which encode master immune transcription factors. Unlike many other SA signalling components, including the SA receptor and biosynthetic genes, optimized CBP60g expression was sufficient to broadly restore SA production, basal immunity and effector-triggered immunity at the elevated growth temperature without significant growth trade-offs. CBP60g family transcription factors are widely conserved in plants¹². These results have implications for safeguarding the plant immune system as well as understanding the concept of the plant-pathogen-environment disease triangle and the emergence of new disease epidemics in a warming climate.