Disease Resistant Plants: a Review

Abstract

Modern agriculture provides sufficient nutrients to feed the world’s growing population, which is expected to increase from 7.3 billion in 2015 to at least 9.8 billion by 2050. The disease-resistant plants were made to reduce crop loss caused by diseases. Disease-resistant plants offer an effective, safe, and also an inexpensive method to control many diseases. Most of the commercial varieties of crops are resistant to several pathogens. Resistant or immune varieties of crops are critically important for low-value plants in which other controls are unavailable, or their expense makes them impractical. There are several means by which disease-resistant plants can be obtained. Resistant varieties can be obtained alone or in combination which commonly includes an introduction from an outside source, selection, and induced variation. Genes from plants, microbes, and animals can be recombined (recombinant DNA) and introduced into the living cells of any organism. Appropriate use of pesticides in an integrated disease management plan may also be an important part of controlling certain diseases. With a highly resistant variety, a crop disease can be controlled with no added cost and no health risks to the farmer, farmworkers, or environment. The future challenge for plant pathology will be to leverage this increasing knowledge base in the models to engineer durable resistance in the major crop plants to sustain yield in the face of altering climatic conditions.