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Engineering disease resistance in plants

Nature volume 411, pages 865–868 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Ever since the initial discovery of the molecules and genes involved in disease resistance in plants, attempts have been made to engineer durable disease resistance in economically important crop plants. Unfortunately, many of these attempts have failed, owing to the complexity of disease-resistance signalling and the sheer diversity of infection mechanisms that different pathogens use. Although disease-resistant transgenic plants or seeds are not yet available commercially, future product development seems likely as our current level of understanding of pathogenesis and plant defence improves.

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Figure 1: Generating broad-spectrum disease resistance using an elicitor and resistance gene.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all colleagues in Syngenta and especially the team at Syngenta-MOGEN for helpful discussions and suggestions, and B. van Wezenbeek for critically reading the manuscript. It is impossible to include all approaches in a complex field such as this, and we apologize to all colleagues whose work was not referred to.

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  1. Syngenta-MOGEN, Einsteinweg 97, Leiden, 2333 CB, The Netherlands

    Maarten H. Stuiver & Jerome H. H. V. Custers

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  1. Maarten H. Stuiver
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Correspondence to Maarten H. Stuiver.

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Stuiver, M., Custers, J. Engineering disease resistance in plants. Nature 411, 865–868 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35081200

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