Durability of Disease Resistance

From February 24 -28, 1992 an international symposium on Durability of Disease Resistance was held at the International Agricultural Centre in Wageningen, the Netherlands. The symposium, organized by the Department of Plant Breeding of Wageningen Agricultural University and the Centre for Plant Breeding and Repro­ duction Research, CPRO-DLO, was part of the DGIS funded programme Durable Resistance in Developing Countries. Without any form of prevention or protection nearly all crops will be seriously or even severely damaged by a range of pathogens. In modern agriculture man has been able to control many if not most pathogens using i) pesticides, ii) phyto­ sanitary methods such as control of seed and plant material in order to start a crop disease free, iii) agronomic measures such as crop rotation, iv) disease resis­ tance or combinations of these measures. Over the years the use of pesticides has increased enormously and so did the pro­ blems associated with pesticide use, such as environmental pollution and building of resistance and tolerance to these pesticides in the pathogens. The use of resis­ tance too increased strongly over the years and here too problems arose.