Yinghua Huang
Oklahoma State University, USA
Title: Genomics generates new insights into host plant defense and offers novel strategies for crop protection
Biography
Biography: Yinghua Huang
Abstract
Plant diseases and insect pests are the important threats to agricultural production and crop losses to diseases and insects can be greater than ~30% of the annual global production. Managing the health of crop plants to assure sustainable agricultural production can be very challenging. However, rapid advances in plant genomics are evolving our ability to analyze plant-pest interactions for a better understanding how host plants defend themselves against those attackers. In recent years, we have been developing and applying these sophisticated genomic tools to examine interactions between crop plants and pests to elucidate the genetic mechanisms of plant resistance and to fill the gap existing between genotype and phenotype of crop plants. Furthermore, the rapid development of high throughput technologies and the availability of immense amount of genomic and genetic data will provide system approaches for understanding and solving the remaining questions on host plant defense against attacking pests. This presentation reports the recent findings in the above mentioned research and demonstrates how genomics approaches can facilitate both the identification and use of resistance genes to diseases and insect pests and the development of novel resistant hybrids and varieties to achieve environmentally friendly crop protection and sustainable crop production.