The Use of Transgenic Plants Expressing Antimicrobial Peptide Genes as a Promising Strategy to Improve Plant Resistance to Phytopathogens

Plant diseases significantly reduce crop yields and deteriorate the quality of agricultural products. The review is devoted to the problem of increasing plant resistance to pathogens by creating transgenic plants expressing antimicrobial peptide (AMP) genes as one of the strategies for plant disease control. The review summarizes the main economically important plant diseases caused by pathogenic fungi and bacteria and describes methods of plant resistance against them. The need to develop new, environmentally friendly plant protection products from the defensive arsenal of the plants themselves, which could be incorporated into an integrated plant defense management instead of/alongside traditionally used chemical pesticides, is emphasized. Plant antimicrobial peptides could become such new biopesticides. The review outlines the main properties of AMPs that make them promising molecules for enhancing crop resistance to phytopathogens and provides numerous examples of transgenic plants developed under laboratory conditions in which incorporated AMP genes improved their resistance to infection. Thus, the described strategy may become an important component of integrated plant disease control strategy against phytopathogens in the future.