Biotechnological Resources to Increase Disease-Resistance by Improving Plant Immunity: A Sustainable Approach to Save Cereal Crop Production

Plant diseases are globally causing substantial losses in staple crop production, undermin-ing the urgent goal of a 60% increase needed to meet the food demand, a task made more challengingby the climate changes. Main consequences concern the reduction of food amount and quality. Cropdiseases also compromise food safety due to the presence of pesticides and/or toxins. Nowadays,biotechnology represents our best resource both for protecting crop yield and for a science-basedincreased sustainability in agriculture. Over the last decades, agricultural biotechnologies have madeimportant progress based on the diffusion of new, fast and efficient technologies, offering a broadspectrum of options for understanding plant molecular mechanisms and breeding. This knowledgeis accelerating the identification of key resistance traits to be rapidly and efficiently transferred andapplied in crop breeding programs. This review gathers examples of how disease resistance may beimplemented in cereals by exploiting a combination of basic research derived knowledge with fastand precise genetic engineering techniques. Priming and/or boosting the immune system in cropsrepresent a sustainable, rapid and effective way to save part of the global harvest currently lost todiseases and to prevent food contamination.