Genomic Design for Biotic Stress Tolerance in Vegetable Brassicas

Abstract

Vegetable Brassica species comprise various agro-economically significant crops that offer nutrition and health-promoting elements to humans globally. In recent years, the major constraint of the Brassica crop production is constantly evolving fungi, virus, bacteria and insects causing variety of diseases, ultimately affecting quality and quantity of plant products. Among many of them, major threats to crop productions are clubroot, Fusarium wilt, stem rot, black leg, downy mildew, diamondback moth and TuMV disease. Traditional approaches of disease management are largely expensive, offer incomplete efficacy, and cause, in some cases, environmental harm; however, the best strategy is to identify resistant genetic resources, mining of genes/loci and deploy them in Brassica crop improvement programs. Combination of molecular breeding tools with advanced next generation sequencing (rapid and cost-effective) derived methods enables quick detection of resistant genes, and development of molecular markers that can be utilized in resistant breeding. Altogether in this chapter, we present a review on how vegetable Brassicas can be improved to address diverse biotic stresses, their plant genetic resources, genetic and genomics tools for their introduction into the cultivated Brassica crops and subsequently developing Brassica crops resistant to the adverse biotic conditions.