Bioscience Methods 2025, Vol.16, No.2, 108-116 http://bioscipublisher.com/index.php/bm 108 Research Insights Open Access Genomic Strategies for Disease Resistance Breeding in Sugarcane: Identification of Resistance Genes, Transcriptomic Analysis, and Molecular Markers Dandan Huang1, May H. Wang1,2 1 Hainan Institute of Biotechnology, Haikou, 570206, Hainan, China 2 Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572024, Hainan, China Corresponding email: 174708555@qq.com Bioscience Methods, 2025, Vol.16, No.3 doi: 10.5376/bm.2025.16.0011 Received: 01 Mar., 2025 Accepted: 11 Apr., 2025 Published: 02 May, 2025 Copyright © 2025 Huang and Wang, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Preferred citation for this article: Huang D.D., and Wang H.M., 2025, Genomic Strategies for disease resistance breeding in sugarcane: identification of resistance genes, transcriptomic analysis, and molecular markerst, Bioscience Methods, 16(3): 108-116 (doi: 10.5376/bm.2025.16.0011) Abstract Sugar cane is an important sugar crop in the world. Its yield and quality are often affected by a variety of diseases, which seriously restricts industrial development. Traditional disease-resistant breeding methods have problems such as long cycles and low efficiency, which are difficult to meet the needs of modern agriculture for efficient and precise breeding. With the advancement of genomics technology, sugarcane disease-resistant breeding has entered a new stage. This study systematically reviews the genomic strategies of sugarcane disease-resistant breeding, covering genomic resource construction, disease-resistant gene mining and functional verification, transcriptome analysis, molecular marker development, and multiomic integration application. Particularly emphasized the potential of emerging technologies such as gene editing, pan-genome and artificial intelligence in improving the efficiency of disease-resistant breeding. By integrating multi-level omics data and advanced technologies, sugarcane disease-resistant breeding is expected to achieve the transformation from traditional experience to precise design, providing a solid theoretical foundation and technical support for cultivating new sugarcane varieties with high yield, high sugar and disease-resistant sugarcane. Keywords Sugarcane; Disease-resistant breeding; Genomics; Transcriptome analysis; Molecular marker 1 Introduction Sugarcane (Saccharumspp.) is an important sugar and bioenergy crop worldwide and is mainly grown in tropical and subtropical regions. However, various diseases seriously threaten their production, causing significant economic losses. To achieve sustainable cultivation and meet the growing demand for sugar and biofuels, it is especially important to cultivate disease-resistant sugar cane varieties. Sugarcane normally gets sick because of different germs like fungi, bacteria and viruses. The most common diseases are red rot disease, smut disease, white leaf disease and mosaic disease. Sugarcane plants do not mature well if they are infected by these diseases. As a result, farmers harvest a lot less sugarcane and its quality is also poor. This has proved to be a major problem for sugarcane fields across the globe, as it is now harder to grow enough healthy sugarcane (Pimenta et al., 2023). Because sugarcane has a complex polyploid genome, traditional disease-resistant breeding methods face many difficulties. This complexity increases the difficulty of genetic analysis and extends the breeding cycle (Wu et al., 2022). Furthermore, disease-resistant traits have quantitative genetic characteristics and are susceptible to environmental factors, making it difficult to obtain stable and lasting disease resistance by conventional methods (Lu et al., 2023; Lin et al., 2024). New gene technology is helping make sugarcane more disease-resistant. Scientists can now use DNA sequencing to find genes that fight diseases. This helps pick the best plants for breeding faster. Another method called GWAS looks at the whole genome to spot disease-resistant traits. By studying how genes work when plants get sick, we learn how sugarcane defends itself. Adding these gene tools to breeding programs speeds up creating stronger sugarcane types. This is good for farming long-term because healthier plants mean better harvests.
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