Natural variation in an NLR pair confers thermostable resistance to a devastating bacterial pathogen

Climate change reshapes host-pathogen interactions by increasing pathogen aggressiveness and weakening plant immune responses, particularly under heat stress. Nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immune receptors, key players in pathogen recognition, are altered under elevated temperatures in both plants and mammals, posing a major challenge to disease resistance. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the well-described RPS4/RRS1 NLR pair confers resistance to the worldwide devastating phytopathogenic Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum . Here, by combining the exploration of natural genetic variation with genetic mapping, polymorphism analysis, structural modeling, and functional complementation, we demonstrated that the paucity of full thermostable resistance is primarily associated with a unique RPS4/RRS1 haplotype carrying key substitutions in leucine-rich repeat domains. These findings reveal natural genetic diversity as a source of thermostable resistance, highlighting promising opportunities to engineer climate-resilient plants.