S.S.

JAIN SUBODH PG (AUTONOMOUS)

COLLEGE, JAIPUR

Breeding for Plant Disease Resistance

GIRISH KUMAR
Roll no- 1888011
Sem-4nd, 2019
Department of Botany
 Disease Resistance

Definition:
The ability of an organism to defend itself against
pathogen attack and establishment of disease. In other words,
disease resistance is the reduction of pathogen growth. This most
often involves innate immunity whereby the organism responds
to pathogen in a generic way.
Resistance provided in these two following ways-
 By pre-formed structures & chemicals
 By infection-induced response of the immune system.
Introduction:
 The use of disease resistant varieties for controlling plant disease
has been termed the “Painless Method” because it does not cost
the farmer anything.
 In a underdeveloped country like India, it is all the more important
since we can’t pay for the heavy costs of spraying and dusting
crops on a large scale.
 Use of resistant cultivars eliminates the hazard to human health
and wildlife which results from the use of poisonous chemicals
and their residues.
 Resistant crop varieties check epidemics of pathogens and pests
and thus help to maintain the biological balance in the
environments.
 It has been proved in several cases that the resistance or
susceptibility to disease is located in the genes.
 The breeding of resistant varieties of crops is based upon the law
of inheritance.
 DISEASE REACRIONS

Various reactions of hosts to the pathogen may be grouped into;

 Susceptible: disease development is profuse & is presumably

not checked by host genotype e.g. Agra Local susceptible to
wheat rust.
r=1

 Immune: host does not show symptoms of a disease (100%

freedom from infection).
r=0

 Resistance :less disease than susceptible, r>0 & r<1

 Tolerant: a tolerant cultivar is one which endures disease

attack & looks susceptible one.
Vertical\ Qualitative Resistance:
 Specific resistance of host to particular race of a pathogen.
 Also called oligogenic, race specific, pathotype specific or
specific resistance.
 Controlled by one or few major genes.
 When controlled by single major gene it is known as monogenic
resistance.
 Each gene has large & easily identifiable effect on resistance.
 Less stable as can be overcome by appearance of one virulent
gene.
 VR involves hypersensitive reaction to the pathogen.
 Less effect of environment.
 VR governed by two or more major gene is more durable than
controlled by single major gene.
 Very effective against few races but totally ineffective against
others.
 Transfer from one host to other is simple.
Horizontal\ Quantitative Resistance:
 Resistance of host to all the races of pathogen.
 Reproduction rate of pathogen is never zero, but is less than one, i.e.
r>0 but <1.
 Also called as race non specific, pathotype non specific, polygenic,
partial or general resistance.
 Controlled by polygenes.
 Provides protection from all races of a pathogen.
 It has continuous variation & hence, impossible to classify plants
into different clear-cut classes.
 More durable than VR since it involves several features (polygenes)
of host plant.
 More stable since it require new genes for virulent that is less
probable.
 Influenced by environmental factors.
 Some degree of effectiveness against all races though may not be
equally effective against all.
 Transfer of HR from one host to another is more difficult than VR.
 Mechanism of disease resistance

 Mechanical
 Hypersensitivity
 Nutritional

Mechanical :

 Certain mechanical &/or anatomical features of host may

prevent infection.
 Waxiness, hairiness and toughness of the epidermis.
 E.g. Closed flowering habit of wheat & barley prevents infection
by spores of ovary infecting fungi.
 Several leaf characters of rice cultivars viz. rolled, narrow &
dark green were associated with resistance to bacterial leaf blight
(X.campestris pv.oryzae) resistance.
Hypersensitivity\Biochemical:
 Immediately after infection several host cells surrounding the
point of infection die leading to death of pathogen or prevents
spore production.
 Found in bio trophic or obligate parasite (e.g. C.O. of rust, smut
etc.).
 Hypersensitive cell produce chemical/ phenolic compounds
(phytoalexins etc.) which are fungi toxic & auto toxic.
 In large no. of cases, immune reaction is due to hypersensitive
reaction of host.
Nutritional:
 The reduction in growth & in spore production is generally
supposed to be due to an unfavorable physiological conditions
within the host.
 Most likely, a resistant host does not fulfill the nutritional
requirements of pathogen & hence limits its growth &
reproduction.
Sources of disease resistance:

A known variety

Germplasm collection

Wild species

Mutations

Somaclonal variation

Unrelated organisms
Methods of breeding for disease resistance

Commonly used breeding methods are:

 Selection
 Introduction
 Mutation Tradional Methods
 Hybridization

MAS
 Tissue Culture Methods:
 Somaclonal Variation
Biotechnological Tools
 Somatic Hybridization (Protoplast fusion)
Meristem-tip culture (for virus free planting material)
Genetic engineering (Transgenics)
SELECTION
 The source of resistance is a cultivated variety
 mass selection and pure lines selection in self pollinated crops; mass and
recurrent selection in cross pollinated species; and clonal selection in the
vegetative propagated crops will be ideal for isolating disease resistant plants.
 The resistant plants may be multiplied, screened & released as a variety.
 Pusa sawani, bhindi (A.esculentus) from Bihar is resistant to yellow
mosaic under field condition.
INTRODUCTION
 The resistant variety may be introduced & after testing, if found
suitable, can be released in the disease prone area.
 Easy & quick.
 Introduction also serve as source of resistance in breeding
programmed.
Mutations
 Induced mutations can be utilized by Direct release as a variety
(resistant mutant) & by utilization in hybridization programme.

 e.g. Co 8153, a sugarcane variety developed from variety Co 775 with

the use of gamma-ray irradiation was resistant to smut.

Hybridization
 Hybridization is used when resistant genes are available either in the
germplasm or in wild species of crop plants.
After hybridization, the hybrid material is handled either by pedigree
method or by backcross method.
The pedigree method is used when the resistance is governed by
polygene and the resistant variety is an adapted one which also
contributes some desirable agronomic traits.
The backcross method is used when resistance to governed by
oligogenes.
SOMACLONAL VARIATION:
 Disease resistant somaclonal variants can be obtained by following
two ways:

1) Screening: Plants regenerated from cultured cells or their progeny

are subjected to disease test & resistant plants are isolated.

2) Cell Selection: cultured cells are selected for resistance to the

toxin or culture filtrate produced by the pathogen & plants are
regenerated from the selected cells.

 Cell selection strategy is most likely to be successful in cases where

the toxin is involved in disease development.
 Resistance was first reported in sugarcane for eye spot disease
(Helminthosporium sacchari)
Somatic cell hybridization

 Involves physical union or fusion of protoplast from two parents.

 A technique of fused protoplast from two contrasting genotypes
for production of hybrids or cybrids which contain various
mixture of nuclear & / or cytoplasmic genomes respectively.
 Because of the inherent totipotey of the isolated cell it is possible
to regenerate a whole plant out of the fused protoplasts.
 Somatic hybrids have been produced between several species
such as Arabidopsis thaliang & Brassica compestri, potato &
tomato, Nicotiana and Lycopersicon, etc. (Khush & Brar, 1988).
MERISTEM TIP CULTURE ( for virus free planting
material):

 Cultivation of axillary or apical shoot meristems, particularly of

shoot apical meristem is known as meristem culture.
The virus concentration decreases towards the growing point in
infected plant.
Generally, explants taken for actively growing plants at the beginning
of growing season are the most suitable.
 In practice shoot tip of upto 1 micro meter are used when the
objective in virus elimination.
 e.g. Banana free from cucumber mosaic virus, cauliflower free from
cauliflower mosaic virus, pea from seed borne mosaic virus.
 Also used to develop virus free plants of dahlia, strawberry,
chrysanthemum, orchids, etc.
Transgenics for disease resistance
Transfer of genes between plant species has played an important role
in crop improvement for many decades.
 Genes expected to confer disease resistance are isolated, cloned &
transferred into the crop in question.
 Useful traits viz.,resistance to diseases, insects & pest have been
transferred to crop varieties from noncultivated plants.
 The overall process of genetic transformation involves introduction,
integration & expression of foreign gene in the recipient host plant.
 Plant that carry additional stably integrated, & expressed foreign
genes transferred (transgenes) from other genetic sources are referred
to as transgenic plants.
 The capacity to introduce and express diverse foreign genes in plants
was first described in tobacco by Agrobacterium mediated and
vectorless approach.
 A virus resistant transgenic variety of squash is in commercial
cultivation in USA.
Screening technique:
 Screening for disease resistance is carried out under field and glasshouse conditions.
 The glasshouse tests are conducted under controlled conditions & therefore, glasshouse
screening is considered more reliable than field tests.
Screening procedure for various types of diseases:
Soil borne diseases
 For soil borne diseases like root rots, colar rots, wilts, etc. the screening is done
in disease sick plots.
 Disease sick plots are developed in three ways :
 by mixing soil from other sick plots
 by adding remains of diseased plants, and
 by adding inoculum developed in the laboratory.
 The soil from disease sick plots can be used in pots for conducting tests in the
glass house.
Air borne diseases
 For air borne diseases viz, rusts, smuts, mildews, blights, leaf spots, etc.,
 The screening is done either by dusting the spores or by spraying spore
suspension on healthy plants.
 Planting of highly susceptible varieties after few rows of test material is
also used to develop the inoculums.

Seed borne diseases

 In case of seed borne disease like smuts and bunts, either dry spores are
dusted on the seeds or the seeds are soaked in the spore suspension.

Insect transmitted diseases

 the insect from susceptible varieties are collected and released on healthy
plants or juice of diseased plants is rubbed onto healthy plants after
causing mechanical injury in healthy plants.
Merits of breeding for disease:
 Losses caused by disease crops are minimized with use of resistant varieties.
 Reduction in the cost of production resulting in increasing cost benefit ratio.
 Reduces environmental pollution & heath hazards by reducing use of pesticides.
 Genetic resistance is only solution of some of the diseases
such as wilts, rusts, smuts, nematodes and bacterial blights.
Demerits of breeding for disease:
 It is long term process which takes 10-15 years to develop agronomical acceptable
variety.
 In some cases, breeding for resistant to one disease leads to the susceptibility to
another pests.
 Breeding for disease resistance is an expensive method (requires adequate finance
for long period).