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.
Keywords: Active/passive loss of susceptibility, Direct/Indirect perception,
Executor genes, Extracellular/Intracellular perception, Integrated domain,
Resistance mechanism.
