Genetic engineering for increasing fungal and bacterial disease resistance in crop plants

We review the current and future potential of genetic engineering strategies used to make fungal and bacterial pathogen-resistant GM crops, illustrating different examples of the technologies and the potential benefits and short-falls of the strategies. There are well- established procedures for the production of transgenic plants with resistance towards these pathogens and considerable progress has been made using a range of new methodologies. There are no current commercially available transgenic plant species with increased resistance towards fungal and bacterial pathogens; only plants with increased resistance towards viruses are available. With an improved understanding of plant signaling pathways in response to a range of other pathogens, such as fungi, additional candidate genes for achieving resistance are being investigated. The potential for engineering plants for resistance against individual devastating diseases or for plants with resistance towards multiple pathogens is discussed in detail.