Plant diseases reduce crop yields and threaten global food security, making the selection of disease-resistant cultivars a major goal of crop breeding. Broad-spectrum resistance (BSR) is a desirable trait because it confers resistance against more than one pathogen species or against the majority of races or strains of the same pathogen. Recently, scientists from the State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, IPP-CAAS published a review paper titled Exploiting Broad-Spectrum Disease Resistance in Crops: From Molecular Dissection to Breeding in the prestigious journal Annual Review of Plant Biology.

Many BSR genes cloned in plants have been found to encode pattern recognition receptors, nucleotide-binding, leucine-rich repeat receptors, defense-signaling and pathogenesis-related proteins. In addition, the BSR genes that underlie quantitative trait loci, loss of susceptibility, and nonhost resistance have also been characterized. In this paper, the authors comprehensively reviewed advances made in the identification and characterization of BSR genes in various species and investigated their application in crop breeding. They also discussed the challenges and potential solutions for utilization of BSR genes in the breeding of disease-resistant crops.

More details are available at the link bellow:

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-arplant-010720-022215

By Ning Yuese (ningyuese@caas.cn)