Molecular Pathogens, 2025, Vol.16, No.4, 159-170 http://microbescipublisher.com/index.php/mp 159 Research Insight Open Access Molecular Basis of Wheat Resistance to Fungal Diseases Wei Wang , Zhengqi Ma Institute of Life Science, Jiyang College of Zhejiang A&F University, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China Corresponding author: wei.wang@jicat.org Molecular Pathogens, 2025, Vol.16, No.4 doi: 10.5376/mp.2025.16.0017 Received: 20 May, 2025 Accepted: 30 Jun., 2025 Published: 15 Jul., 2025 Copyright © 2025 Wang and Ma, 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: Wang W., and Ma Z.Q., 2025, Molecular basis of wheat resistance to fungal diseases, Molecular Pathogens, 16(4): 159-170 (doi: 10.5376/mp.2025.16.0017) Abstract Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world, but a variety of fungal diseases seriously threaten its yield and quality. In recent years, basic research on disease resistance in wheat has made a series of breakthroughs: it has identified a large number of disease resistance genes and their types (such as NLR resistance genes, pattern recognition receptors, etc.), and elucidated the core pathways of pathogen recognition and immune signaling, including immunity (PTI) triggered by PAMP and immunity (ETI) triggered by effectors. The study revealed the key role of transcription factors, non-coding RNA and epigenetic regulation in disease-resistant gene expression networks; it clarified the contribution of defense systems such as disease-resistant secondary metabolites accumulation, cell wall reinforcement and reactive oxygen species to the disease-resistant resistance of wheat. These basic understandings are being applied to molecular breeding practices, including molecular marker-assisted selection, genome-wide association analysis to screen disease-resistant sites, and targeted improvement of wheat disease resistance using CRISPR/Cas gene editing. This study elaborates on the latest research progress on the molecular basis of wheat antifungal diseases, including disease-resistant gene resources and their molecular characteristics, pathogen identification and immune signals, biological resistance regulatory networks, defense-related metabolic pathways, and molecular breeding strategies. The mechanism and breeding practice of wheat anti-stripe rust are selected as cases for in-depth analysis. Finally, the study of the molecular mechanism of wheat resistance and the future direction of disease resistance breeding is summarized and prospected. Keywords Wheat; Fungal disease; Disease resistance gene; Immune mechanism; Molecular breeding 1 Introduction Wheat (Triticum aestivum) provides about one-fifth of the total human calories and is one of the largest food crops in the world. However, the prevalence of fungal diseases poses a long-term and serious threat to wheat production. According to statistics, among the pest and diseases of major food crops around the world, the top diseases are caused by fungi, and fungal diseases such as rust, powdery mildew, and gibberellia in wheat have been raging in major production areas around the world for many years (Ghimire et al., 2020). In China, wheat rust and gibberellosis broke out on multiple large-scale outbreaks in the late 20th century to the early 21st century, causing some areas to lose harvests, and sounded the alarm for national food security. Common devastating fungal diseases in wheat include strip rust, leaf rust, stalk rust, powdery mildew and gibberellia. They occur in major wheat-producing areas around the world and cause huge economic losses. Wheat strip rust is caused by Puccinia striformis f. sp. tritici. Its lesions are strip-shaped yellow rust spores, which can spread from a distance with the airflow. It is known as the "cancer of wheat" (Ren et al., 2020). Stripe rust has repeatedly caused severe wheat production cuts in southwest, northwest and the west coast of North America in history, and a single epidemic can cause millions of tons of production cuts. Leaf rust and stalk rust are caused by P. triticina and P. graminis f. sp. tritici, respectively. They both explode rapidly and spread widely under high temperature and high humidity conditions. Powdery mildew is caused by infecting leaves with glutinous powdery bacteria, which is common in the high yield conditions of dense planting. The loss can reach more than 20% when there are insufficient disease-resistant varieties. Gibberella disease is prone to prevalence in warm and humid climates. For example, the wheat area in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the 2000s caused a "double reduction" in wheat yield and quality, with a piercing rate of up to 50%~80%, and the vomit toxins in the harvested grain exceeded the standard.
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