Cotton Genomics and Genetics 2025, Vol.16, No.3, 137-147 http://cropscipublisher.com/index.php/cgg 144 gene, a line that can resist both Verticillium wilt and Fusarium wilt was bred. This double-resistant cotton provides a new solution for the integrated prevention and control of cotton diseases in Xinjiang. These research results not only help solve the problem of insufficient local high-resistant varieties, but also make Xinjiang's cotton production more stable and sustainable (Liu et al., 2006). 9 Challenges and Future Directions The "war" between cotton and Fusarium wilt pathogens continues. Verticillium dahliae and Fusarium oxysporum evolve very quickly and have many genetic changes, which brings a lot of trouble to prevention and control. These pathogens will use various methods to deal with cotton, such as interfering with the plant's immune response, adapting to poor soil environments, and secreting toxins to harm plants. These mechanisms make it difficult for cotton to maintain long-term disease resistance. There is a complex interaction between the virulence factors of pathogens and the defense system of cotton. Links such as ROS (reactive oxygen species) homeostasis, hormone signaling, and immune receptor activation have not been fully understood. This also makes disease management more challenging. Although we have achieved some results in gene mapping, QTL (quantitative trait loci) discovery, and molecular marker-assisted breeding, cotton itself does not have enough disease resistance gene resources, and many resistance genes are not strong enough. This limits the effectiveness of current molecular breeding. Most of the disease resistance genes that have been discovered have only moderate resistance effects, and these resistances are often controlled by multiple genes and are also affected by the environment, which makes breeding more complicated. When introducing resistance genes into superior varieties, there may also be a problem of "linkage drag", that is, when introducing resistance, undesirable agronomic traits are brought in together, which will affect yield or other traits. In addition, we do not have a deep enough understanding of the entire network that regulates these resistance responses, and there is a lack of highly resistant germplasm resources. These problems also limit the further advancement of research. Future research needs to combine multiple "omics", such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, so that we can have a clearer understanding of how resistance is regulated. Recently, some studies have used methods such as GWAS (genome-wide association analysis), TWAS (transcriptome-wide association study) and eQTL (expression quantitative trait loci) to find key gene modules and regulatory hotspots related to ROS homeostasis and immune response. These results provide new directions for precision breeding. In addition, systems biology and high-throughput phenotyping techniques (such as disease identification combined with machine learning) may also accelerate the discovery of resistance genes and help us build better disease resistance prediction models. Combining these approaches is expected to improve breeding efficiency and accuracy, and ultimately select new cotton varieties with durable and broad-spectrum resistance to both Verticillium wilt and Fusarium wilt. Acknowledgments The platform thanks the two anonymous peer reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. Conflict of Interest Disclosure The authors affirm that this research was conducted without any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. References Abdelraheem A., Elassbli H., Zhu Y., Kuraparthy V., Hinze L., Stelly D., Wedegaertner T., and Zhang J., 2019, A genome-wide association study uncovers consistent quantitative trait loci for resistance to Verticillium wilt and Fusarium wilt race 4 in the US Upland cotton, Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 133(2): 563-577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-019-03487-x Ayyaz M., Chang Z., Ding S., Han P., Xu L., Abudukeyoumu A., Siddho I., Li Z., Lin H., Xu J., Wu Y., and Nie X., 2025, QTL mapping associated with Verticillium wilt resistance in cotton based on MAGIC population, Journal of Cotton Research, 8(1): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42397-025-00211-7 Bhandari S., Niraula D., and Adhikari K., 2020, Fusarium and Verticellum wilt in cotton: a review, Environmental Contaminants Reviews, 3(1): 48-52. https://doi.org/10.26480/ecr.01.2020.48.52
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ4ODYzNA==