Integrated protection of horticultural crops through enhancing endogenous defence mechanisms

Resistance elicitors 'prime' plant defence mechanisms and enable the plants to respond to actual pathogen threats faster. The underlying mechanism is mainly based upon a more effective induction and expression of defence mechanisms. However, being mediated through the plant's complex metabolic pathways where many feedback and trade-off mechanisms operate, the result of resistance priming and induction can potentially affect non-disease resistance mechanisms too. These may result in either positive or negative effects on yield quantity, quality and its components. To develop resistance induction crop protection approaches, a detailed knowledge of the timing and amplitude of defence induction as well as the consequences on target and non-target end-products is required. The molecular tools for such studies and our understanding of the mechanisms in model and crop systems have advanced considerably in recent years.