Chapter 13

Strategies and Mechanisms for Plant Resistance Protein Function

Dhia Bouktila and Yosra Habachi

Abstract

Given the current constraints to sustainable agricultural production, with increasing crop losses due to plant pests and diseases and climate change, considerable advances are required in crop improvement approaches for enabling durable disease resistance. Interestingly, advances in fundamental understanding of the plant immune system will have far reaching implications for genetic resistance development, appropriate for effective and durable disease control and global sustainable agriculture. In particular, a deeper understanding of the molecular and functional mechanisms of resistance (R) genes would make it possible to engineer new resistances for future agriculture. In general, there are currently two main strategies, which include nine recognized molecular mechanisms for R genes, most of them (all but one, mechanism 6: executor genes) have been used against various types of biotic stress and tend to be widely applicable among plants.

Total Pages: 109-117 (9)

Purchase Chapter  Book Details