Abstract
Management of crop diseases through disease resistance is acknowledged to be the most desirable and profitable approach. In order to develop cultivars with built-in resistance, the knowledge about the methods of assessing the levels of resistance to diseases caused by microbial pathogens and identifying resistance sources genes is essentially required. The genetic basis of resistance to various diseases affecting crop(s) of interest, availability of resistance in cultivars or wild hosts, natural variations in pathogen populations, nature of plant-pathogen interaction and markers for identifying genotypes lines possessing resistance genes can be studied by applying a range of molecular techniques. Use of molecular markers has been found to be very useful for selecting resistant plants rapidly even in seedling stage without waiting for the plants to reach the particular growth stage. In addition, the presence and contents of the pathogen DNA can be determined, using appropriate molecular technique well before the appearance of visible symptoms. The molecular bases of race-specific resistance, characterized by programmed cell death (PCD) and general resistance characterized by inducible defense responses exhibited in tissues far away from the infection site have to be clearly understood. The molecular methods have been successfully applied to understand various phenomena such as virulence and avirulence functions, role of elicitors, signaling systems induced in compatible and incompatible interactions, the posttranscriptional gene silencing and virus-induced gene silencing mechanisms, operating in plants and induction of various defense-related compounds and their action on microbial plant pathogens. The fungal, bacterial and viral pathogens have their own unique strategies to enhance their virulence and to overcome the host strategies to hamper their successful colonization of and establishment in plant tissues.
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