Sorghum breeding for biotic stress tolerance

Description

Sorghum breeding is poised to take advantage of remarkable advances in genomics and molecular technologies. Thus, while classical breeding methods have been successful in identifying and incorporating resistance to biotic stresses, this chapter will feature the use of the new tools and technologies that can inform, simplify and accelerate breeding of improved sorghums. We also aim to document many of the previously discovered genetic sources of resistance, since these will be of use with rapidly developing technologies for gene editing and gene transfer. We first review recent classical and molecular developments relating to the major biotic stresses of sorghum, which include diseases (fungal, bacterial and viral), pests, the witchweed, Striga, and nematodes. We go on to consider the structure and function of resistance of ‘R’ genes and their deployment.

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Fungal diseases of sorghum 3 Sorghum pests 4 Other threats: bacterial diseases, Potyvirus spp., Striga and nematodes 5 Resistance genes 6 Summary 7 Where to look for further information 8 Acknowledgements 9 References