Host Plant Resistance (HPR) to Insect Pests

Conventional breeding in conjunction with molecular techniques and transgenic approaches have a great promise to reduce pest associated crop losses, and accelerate the progress in developing cultivars with resistance to insects. Although, considerable progress has been made over the past two decades in manipulating genes from diverse sources to develop plants with resistance to insect pests, rapid and cost effective development and adoption of biotechnology derived products will depend on developing a full understanding on the interaction of genes within their genomic environment, and with the environment in which their conferred phenotype interact. A good beginning has been made in developing genetic linkage maps of many crops, but the accuracy and precision of phenotyping for resistance to insect pests r emains a critical constraint in many crops.