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0:00
Hello.
My name is Professor Robert Park.
I work at the University of
Sydney Plant Breeding Institute
where I hold the
Judith and David Coffey
Chair in Sustainable Agriculture.
I'm also the director of the
Australian Cereal Rust Control
Program.
Today I'm going to talk
to you about biotic stress
tolerance and resistance plants.
0:21
Today's lecture will cover, firstly,
the importance of plant diseases,
secondly, options
for disease control,
and thirdly, I will discuss the
genetic control of plant pathogens.
In this section, I will
cover the terminology
that we use in host
pathogen interactions.
For example, what is resistance
and what its pathogenicity?
I will also discuss the
gene-for-gene hypothesis which
is the foundation of almost all the
work we do in resistance breeding.
And then finally, I want to spend
a little bit of time and talk
to you about the wheat rust
diseases and resistance breeding.
This is an area that I've
worked in for the past 30 years.
1:02
Plants are the basis
of all life on earth.
We as humans need clean air,
water, food, shelter, and fuel.
All of these things
have been provided to us
at one point in time
or another by plants.
Plant diseases are
caused by viruses,
bacteria, fungi,
oomycetes and nematodes.
And globally, these
diseases have been estimated
to reduce plant
production by about 30%.
In thinking about plant disease,
it is important to remember
that the organisms that
cause these diseases
have co-evolved with their hosts
in resilient natural ecosystems.
We as humans have
domesticated many plants
and this, in turn, has
placed huge selection
pressure on pathogen populations.
As a consequence of
that, agriculture
has had to deal with resilient
mutable pathogens that can change
and undo the hard work of breeders.
