Includes bibliographical references and appendices.

In the new millennium, humanity faces challenges it has been puttingoff for too long. Among the greatest challenges are meeting the fooddemand of an estimated 9 billion people by the year 2050, a rapid increase.Agricultural production, water availability, and climate change are alsonegatively impacted. Plants are exposed to a wide range of pests andpathogens, including bacteria, fungi, oomycetes, viruses, nematodes, andinsects,but only in specific interactions do these cause diseases.Pre-harvestpests and pathogens, however, affect 26% of worldwide crop productioneach year.Increasing human populations, loss of agricultural land dueto climate change, erosion, and lack of water require that we minimizeproduction losses such as those caused by pathogens. Since domestication,plant breeding has been the most successful way to develop new cropvarieties, enabling significant advances in food production and societaldevelopment.
Plant resistance plays an important role in adjusting crop production tomeet global population increases, since crops are susceptible to a widerange of pathogens, including fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Wheneverresilient varieties and agrochemicals are deployed to control diseases,they are usually highly effective. The evolutionary potential of manyplant pathogens can, however, rapidly lead to the emergence of novelgenotypes resistant to the resistance gene or phytosanitary product, as aresult of mutation or recombination. When this happens, particular diseasecontrol approaches can quickly become ineffective as the novel genotypesincrease in frequency through natural selection and quickly spread toother locations, causing the failure of control over large geographic areas.
The main focus of this E-Collection on Plant Pathogen Resistance Biotechnologyis an in depth survey of the biological strategies being used to createtransgenic disease resistant plants for sustainable plant resistance. Plantdiseases are globally causing substantial losses in staple crop production,undermining the urgent goal of a 60% increase needed to meet the fooddemand, a task made more challenging by the climate changes. Mainconsequences concern the reduction of food amount and quality.