ABSTRACT
Recent molecular technologies for tackling wheat diseases Indu Sharma, Pramod Prasad and Subhash C. Bhardwaj, ICAR-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, India
1 Introduction
2 Understanding host response to pathogen attack
3 Current strategies for combatting wheat diseases
4 Transgenic approaches to develop disease resistance in wheat: R and APR gene, effectors and transcription factor/peptides-mediated disease resistance
5 Transgenic approaches to develop disease resistance in wheat: pathogenesisrelated (PR) protein, RNA interference (RNAi), virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) and genome editing-mediated disease resistance
6 Marker-assisted selection (MAS) and genomic selection (GS)-based resistance breeding
7 TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes)-based resistance breeding and gene pyramiding
8 Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) and induced systemic resistance (ISR)
9 New methods for detecting and modelling plant pathogens
10 Conclusions
11 Where to look for further information
12 References
With a global production of more than 700 million tons, wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the third most important cereal produced in the world after maize and rice (FAO, 2012) and the second most important in terms of dietary intake after rice. Wheat fulfils 21% of the calorie and 20% of the protein requirements of about 4.5 billion people from 94 developing countries (Braun et al., 2010). With the continuing increase in world population, the demand for wheat is estimated to increase by 60% by 2050 in developing countries. Moreover increases in climate change-induced temperature, diseases, insect pests and other factors are expected to contribute to a reduction in wheat production
by approximately 29% in developing countries (Rosegrant et al., 1995). Besides abiotic factors such as water imbalance and nutrient deficiencies, there are a huge number of biotic stresses which result in low wheat yield. These challenges need to be addressed if wheat yields are to improve.
