Trichoderma-Induced Resistance to Botrytis cinerea in Solanum Species: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

With the idea of summarizing the outcomes of studies focusing on the resistance induced by <i>Trichoderma</i> spp. against <i>Botrytis cinerea</i> in tomato, the present paper shows, for the first time, results of a meta-analysis performed on studies published from 2010 to 2021 concerning the cross-talk occurring in the tomato-<i>Trichoderma</i>-<i>B. cinerea</i> system. Starting from an initial set of 40 papers, the analysis was performed on 15 works and included nine parameters, as a result of a stringent selection mainly based on the availability of more than one article including the same indicator. The resulting work not only emphasizes the beneficial effects of <i>Trichoderma</i> in the control of grey mold in tomato leaves (reduction in disease intensity, severity and incidence and modulation of resistance genes in the host), but carefully drives the readers to reply to two questions: (i) What are the overall effects of <i>Trichoderma</i> on <i>B. cinerea</i> infection in tomato? (ii) Do the main effects of <i>Trichoderma</i> differ based on the tomato species, <i>Trichoderma</i> species, amount, type and duration of treatment? At the same time, this meta-analysis highlights some weak points of the available literature and should be seen as an invitation to improve future works to better the conceptualization and measure.