Progenitors and other wild relatives of cultivated plants play a major role in crop improvement programs and are a treasury for sources of resistance against diseases and pests, which is documented in 27 chapters of this book. These reflect millenia of coevolution in their natural habitats of wild plant species and their parasites, including many obligate parasites with their physiologically intimate and genetically interlocked host-parasite associations.
Two introductory chapters, largely based on results obtained from relevant studies in Israel, exemplify the ‚Protection of Indigenousness« that coevolution created. It imparted durable resistance for millenia to crop progenitors in indigenous ecosystems, and bequeathed a plethora of both coevolved resistance genes for crop improvement and knowledge how to manage them.
Two concluding chapters map the way to emulate the ‚Protection of Indigenousness« on the road to crop improvement for agroecosystems. Supported by relevant experiments and case studies a ‚Unifying Theory« predicts essential gains in durability of protective levels of disease resistance in stands of cultivated plants from mixtures of annual small graines to perennial coffee that integrate even modest levels of genetic diversity for disease reaction with ensuing dilatory effects on pathogen spread and virulence change.