English

Abstract

To feed the world human population which is expected to reach 10 billion in the next three decades, agricultural sustainability is required for stable food production. However, crops always suffer from many biotic and abiotic stresses. Among them, plant pathogens often cause severe yield losses. Plant pathogenic oomycetes are one of the most destructive plant diseases, which include Phytophthora infestans in potato and tomato, Phytophthora capsici in peppers, Phytophthora sojae in soybean, Phytophthora fragariae var. fragariae in strawberry, Plasmopara viticola in grapevine, and Pseudoperonospora cubensis in cucurbits. Therefore, rapid, robust and sophisticated molecular technologies are required for accurate identification and characterization of the oomycetes, to manage crop diseases resistances. In addition, breeding highly disease resistant varieties is also essential for sustainable agriculture. Molecular marker technology, especially recent advanced next-generation sequencing-based methods, would provide helpful information to monitor the pathogen endemicity and to breed the resistant cultivars through a gene pyramiding strategy. In this review, there was focus on both conventional and novel genotyping techniques for oomycete characterization and resistant gene identification in crops, to discuss future outlook for successful disease management.   Key words: Oomycete plant pathogens, vegetable crops, genomics, molecular markers, next-generation sequencing technology.