Plant breeding at the onset of the 3rd millennium.

Gerhard Wenzel

Chair for Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Centre for Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, D-85350 Freising-Weihenstephan (Germany)

Ursula Frei

Chair for Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Centre for Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, D-85350 Freising-Weihenstephan (Germany)

Thomas Lübberstedt

Chair for Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Centre for Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, D-85350 Freising-Weihenstephan (Germany)

Volker Mohler

Chair for Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Centre for Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, D-85350 Freising-Weihenstephan (Germany)

Fritz Thümmler

Chair for Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Centre for Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, D-85350 Freising-Weihenstephan (Germany)

Abstract

To improve crop yield, DNA technology has been used to enhance plant resistance toward pathogens and pests. Genes identified through understanding of host-pathogen interactions in viral, bacterial and fungal diseases, the mechanism of hypersensitive reaction in Arabidopsis and insect toxicity of natural peptides are used for their expression in plants. Progress on the use of simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers for resistance gene identification, development of virus-specific antibody gene expression in plants for virus control, construction of genes for multi-pathogen resistance, and use of viral vectors for gene efficiency evaluation are discussed.