Trichoderma virens exerts herbicidal effect on Arabidopsis thaliana via modulation of amino acid metabolism

Trichoderma virens is a plant beneficial fungus well-known for its biocontrol, herbicidal and growth promotion activity. Earlier, we identified HAS (HA-synthase, a terpene cyclase) and GAPDH (glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase) to be involved in the production of multiple non-volatiles and non-volatile+volatile metabolites, respectively. The present study delineates the function of HAS and GAPDH in regulating herbicidal activity, using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Under axenic conditions, rosette-biomass of seedlings co-cultivated with ΔHAS (HASR) and ΔGAPDH (GAPDHR) was higher than WT-Trichoderma (WTR) as well as non-colonized control (NoTR), even though the root colonization ability was reduced. However, HASR biomass was still higher than those of GAPDHR, indicating that blocking volatiles will not provide any additional contribution over non-volatile metabolites for Trichoderma-induced herbicidal activity. LC-MS analysis revealed that loss of herbicidal activity of ΔHAS/ΔGAPDH was associated with an increase in the levels of amino acids, which coincided with reduced expression levels of amino-acid catabolism and anabolism related genes in HASR/GAPDHR. RNAi-mediated suppression of an oxidoreductase gene, VDN5, specifically prevented viridin-to-viridiol conversion. Additionally, vdn5 mimics ΔHAS, in terms of amino-acid metabolism gene expression and partially abolishes the herbicidal property of WT-Trichoderma. Thus, the study provides mechanistic frame-work for better utilization of Trichoderma virens for biocontrol purposes, balancing between plant growth promotion and herbicidal activity. [Display omitted] •HAS (non-volatiles) and GAPDH (non-volatile+volatile) regulate production of metabolites.•ΔHAS and ΔGAPDH deletion mutants of Trichoderma display reduced herbicidal activity.•Loss of herbicidal activity in ΔHAS/ΔGAPDH was due to the increased amino acids.•RNAi-mediated suppression of VDN5, specifically prevented viridin-to-viridiol conversion.•vdn5 mimics ΔHAS, in terms of amino-acid metabolism and herbicidal activity.