Journal
PLANTS-BASEL
Volume 10, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/plants10061146
Keywords
crop disease resistance; plant-microbe interaction; molecular mechanisms in plant immunity; sustainable agriculture
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Funding
- Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MIUR)
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Plant diseases globally cause significant losses in staple crop production, affecting the urgent goal of increasing food demand by 60% and leading to reductions in both quantity and quality of food. Biotechnology serves as a key resource for protecting crop yield and promoting sustainability in agriculture through advancements in understanding plant molecular mechanisms and breeding.
Plant diseases are globally causing substantial losses in staple crop production, undermining the urgent goal of a 60% increase needed to meet the food demand, a task made more challenging by the climate changes. Main consequences concern the reduction of food amount and quality. Crop diseases also compromise food safety due to the presence of pesticides and/or toxins. Nowadays, biotechnology represents our best resource both for protecting crop yield and for a science-based increased sustainability in agriculture. Over the last decades, agricultural biotechnologies have made important progress based on the diffusion of new, fast and efficient technologies, offering a broad spectrum of options for understanding plant molecular mechanisms and breeding. This knowledge is accelerating the identification of key resistance traits to be rapidly and efficiently transferred and applied in crop breeding programs. This review gathers examples of how disease resistance may be implemented in cereals by exploiting a combination of basic research derived knowledge with fast and precise genetic engineering techniques. Priming and/or boosting the immune system in crops represent a sustainable, rapid and effective way to save part of the global harvest currently lost to diseases and to prevent food contamination.
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