Plant Innate Immunity Signals and Signaling Systems

Book excerpt: The volume III of the book presents the ways and means to manipulate the signals and signaling system to enhance the expression of plant innate immunity for crop disease management. It also describes bioengineering approaches to develop transgenic plants expressing enhanced disease resistance using plant immunity signaling genes. It also discusses recent commercial development of biotechnological products to manipulate plant innate immunity for crop disease management. Engineering durable nonspecific resistance to phytopathogens is one of the ultimate goals of plant breeding. However, most of the attempts to reach this goal fail as a result of rapid changes in pathogen populations and the sheer diversity of pathogen infection mechanisms. Recently several bioengineering and molecular manipulation technologies have been developed to activate the ‘sleeping’ plant innate immune system, which has potential to detect and suppress the development of a wide range of plant pathogens in economically important crop plants. Enhancing disease resistance through altered regulation of plant immunity signaling systems would be durable and publicly acceptable. Strategies for activation and improvement of plant immunity aim at enhancing host’s capability of recognizing invading pathogens, boosting the executive arsenal of plant immunity, and interfering with virulence strategies employed by microbial pathogens. Major advances in our understanding of the molecular basis of plant immunity and of microbial infection strategies have opened new ways for engineering durable resistance in crop plants.