Induced Resistance for a Sustainable Future of Agriculture

Induced resistance (IR) enables plants to increase their resilience against pests and diseases but despite the promising perspectives, the use of induced resistance in crop protection has remained marginal in comparison to the exploitation of pesticides and single resistance genes.

IR provides broad-spectrum protection and enhances the nutritional and nutraceutical value of certain crops. In recent years, it has become very clear that a sustainable future in crop protection and single-use technologies are mutually exclusive. Immunological and ecological IR strategies could be safely integrated into crop protection schemes thus leading to a resilient, environmentally friendly, and economically viable future to keep crops healthy.

One of the goals of sustainable agriculture is the production of food and feed with minimal chemical input. Integrating induced resistance to achieve this goal requires a better understanding of the complex mechanism contributing to the molecular and physiological changes underlying this phenomenon. Both immunological and ecological defense strategies should be taken into account with the aim of providing a sound toolbox to tackle the problem.

The Topic’s overall theme is based on the following lead article published in Frontiers in Science: Enabling sustainable crop protection with induced resistance in plants

We invite authors to contribute high-quality original research articles and review articles on, but not exclusively:

-Epigenetic regulation
-Transcriptional control
-Perception and signaling
-Trade-off
-Context dependency of IR
-Side and off-target effects of IR
-Field application

Keywords: plant immunity, elicitors, integrated pest management, sustainable crop protection, food safety

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.