Genomic Designing for Biotic Stress Resistant Rice

Among major cereal crops, rice plays an important role in global food security as well as to the economic and social stability. Considering the impacts of global warming on agriculture and alarming yield losses due to biotic and abiotic stresses as well as the effect of the climate change on the future insect-pest scenario, effective utilization of advanced tools and techniques of insect-disease biotype/pathotype monitoring and surveillance, identification of stable resistance sources, molecular plant pathology to understand the pathotype/biotype-gene interactions, molecular biology and modern genomics tools to assist crop breeding develop resistant/tolerant varieties shall help researchers find stable solutions. The losses caused by biotic stresses are comparatively high and impart 37–70% yield losses or complete crop failure in many cases. Keeping this in mind, the chapter discusses the importance of rice in global food security, major and emerging biotic stresses in rice, genetic resources of resistant/tolerant genes, map-based gene cloning, trait mapping and major QTLs’ identification, conventional and genomic assisted breeding strategies to develop multiple biotic stress resistant rice varieties. Further, the chapter emphasizes on the efforts including genetic engineering, gene editing and nanotechnological approaches in imparting stable resistance to biotic stresses. The chapter also discusses about various available bioinformatics tools and brief account on social, political and regulatory issues.