Applied Plant Biotechnology for Improving Resistance to Biotic Stress

Applied Plant Biotechnology for Improvement of Resistance to Biotic Stress applies biotechnology insights that seek to improve plant genomes, thus helping them achieve higher resistance and optimal hormone signaling to increase crop yield. The book provides an analysis of the current state-of-the-art in plant biotechnology as applied to improving resistance to biotic stress. In recent years, significant progress has been made towards understanding the interplay between plants and their hosts, particularly the role of plant immunity in regulating, attenuating or neutralizing invading pathogens. As a result, there is a great need to integrate these insights with methods from biotechnology.

• Applies biotechnology insights towards improving plant genomes, achieving higher resistance and optimizing hormone signaling to increase crop yield
• Presents the most modern techniques, investigations, diagnostic tools and assays to monitor and detect contaminating agents in crops, such as grape, tomato, coffee and stone fruit
• Provides encyclopedic coverage of genes, proteins, interaction networks and mechanisms by which plants and hosts seek survival
• Discusses the methods available to make crops resistant and tolerant to disease without decreased yield or food production
• Provides insights for policymakers into the difficulties faced by scientific researchers in the use of biotechnology intervention, transgenes and genetically modified sequences

Dr Palmiro Poltronieri is researcher at the Agrofood Department of the Italian National Research Council. He is co-founder of Biotecgen SME - a service company involved in European projects, such as RIBOREG, NANOMYC, ABSTRESS, and TOMGEM. He has also tutored researchers for another start up, Bioesplora, in the EU project TRANS-BIO. He is Associate Editor to BMC Research Notes and is editor-in-chief for Challenges, an MDPI journal. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Verona University. His current interest is on abiotic stress response in roots of tolerant and sensitive chickpea varieties, on activation of the jasmonic acid synthesis, and in the biotic stress response in model plants.

Professor Yiguo Hong is a scientist based at the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, China. He has expertise in plant viruses and RNA silencing, having publications in international journals, such as PNAS, eLife and Nature Genetics. He serves as editors for several international journals such as Functional & Integrative Genomics. He also holds long-term visiting professorship at both University of Warwick and University of Worcester. His current research covers virus-plant interactions, RNA signaling in plant development, and development of virus technology in plant functional genomics and crop improvement.