Abstract
Fungal diseases pose a major threat to ornamental plants, with an increasing percentage of pathogen-driven host losses. In ornamental plants, management of the majority of fungal diseases primarily depends upon chemical control methods that are often non-specific. Host basal resistance, which is deficient in many ornamental plants, plays a key role in combating diseases. Despite their economic importance, conventional and molecular breeding approaches in ornamental plants to facilitate disease resistance are lagging, and this is predominantly due to their complex genomes, limited availability of gene pools, and degree of heterozygosity. Although genetic engineering in ornamental plants offers feasible methods to overcome the intrinsic barriers of classical breeding, achievements have mainly been reported only in regard to the modification of floral attributes in ornamentals. The unavailability of transformation protocols and candidate gene resources for several ornamental crops presents an obstacle for tackling the functional studies on disease resistance. Recently, multiomics technologies, in combination with genome editing tools, have provided shortcuts to examine the molecular and genetic regulatory mechanisms underlying fungal disease resistance, ultimately leading to the subsequent advances in the development of novel cultivars with desired fungal disease-resistant traits, in ornamental crops. Although fungal diseases constitute the majority of ornamental plant diseases, a comprehensive overview of this highly important fungal disease resistance seems to be insufficient in the field of ornamental horticulture. Hence, in this review, we highlight the representative mechanisms of the fungal infection-related resistance to pathogens in plants, with a focus on ornamental crops. Recent progress in molecular breeding, genetic engineering strategies, and RNAi technologies, such as HIGS and SIGS for the enhancement of fungal disease resistance in various important ornamental crops, is also described.
Highlights
Ornamental plants possess natural beauty and are distinctive due to their exquisite blooms
Significant QTL mapping for Fusarium resistance in lilies was conducted, and the results demonstrated the mapping of four QTLs to linkage groups 1, 5, 13, and 16 of the amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) genetic map [61]
Ornamental crops cannot tolerate fungal disease damage, as diseases directly affect the visual quality of cut flowers, an attribute that is critical for the esthetic value of attractive ornamental plants
Summary
Ornamental plants possess natural beauty and are distinctive due to their exquisite blooms. Plant pathogens cause severe losses in the production and/or quality of various ornamental crops and this is of great economic significance. Advances in genome editing technology and its applications have offered greater possibilities with regard to precise manipulation of the genome sequences at genes of interest, and these techniques are currently being used to improve disease resistance in plants [20]. Research advances, such as biotechnological advancements used for improving resistance against fungal diseases in some economically important ornamentals such as the rose, chrysanthemum, gerbera, lily, carnation, and petunia, are discussed in the current review
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