Plant diseases reduce crop yields and threaten global food security, making the se-lection of disease-resistant cultivars a major goal of crop breeding. Broad-spectrum resistance (BSR) is a desirable trait because it confers resistance against more than one pathogen species or against the majority of races or strains of the same patho-gen. Recently, scientists from the State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, IPP-CAAS published a review paper on BSR in crops: from molecu-lar dissection to breeding.

Many BSR genes cloned in plants have been found to encode pattern recognition re-ceptors, nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeat receptors, and defense-signaling and pathogenesis-related proteins. In addition, the BSR genes that underlie quantita-tive trait loci, loss of susceptibility and nonhost resistance have also been character-ized. In this paper, the authors comprehensively reviewed the advances made in the identifica-tion and characterization of BSR genes in various species and in-vestigated their application in crop breeding. They also discuss the challenges and potential solu-tions for utilization of BSR genes in the breeding of disease-resistant crops.