Immunity priming uncouples the growth-defense tradeoff in tomato

Plants have developed an array of mechanisms to protect themselves against pathogen invasion. The deployment of defense mechanisms is imperative for plant survival, but can come at the expense of plant growth, leading to the "growth- defense trade-off" phenomenon. Following pathogen exposure, plants can develop resistance to further attack. This is known as induced resistance, or priming. Here, we investigated the growth-defense trade-off, examining how defense priming via Systemic Acquired Resistance (SAR), or Induced Systemic Resistance (ISR), affects tomato development and growth. We found that defense priming can promote, rather than inhibit, plant development, and that defense priming and growth tradeoffs can be uncoupled. Cytokinin response was activated during induced resistance, and found to be required for the observed growth and disease resistance resulting from ISR activation. ISR was found to have a stronger effect on plant development than SAR. Our results suggest that growth promotion and induced resistance can be co-dependent, and that in certain cases, defense priming can drive developmental processes and promote plant yield. Summary statementGrowth-defense tradeoffs in plants result in loss of yield. Here, we demonstrate that immunity priming in different pathways uncouples this tradeoff and allows for disease resistant plants with robust growth.