Plants' Defense and Survival Strategies versus Pathogens' Anti‐Defense and Infection Capabilities: The Hormone‐Based Mechanisms

Biotic stresses are one of the major limiting factors to crop productivity worldwide. This mainly includes attack of fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens on plants. A plant acquires a multifaceted defense signaling mechanism that intercedes the reaction to these biotic stresses. Defense signaling employed by plants predominantly depends upon the type of the pathogen and its mode of infection. Thus, it is necessary to understand the plant defense response to biotic stress to generate efficient crop improvement strategies. In this regard, recent studies on plant hormone signaling were remarkably helpful in revealing their role in defense against pathogens. It is important to dissect the key regulatory hormonal pathways and associated factors required for the progression of pathogen infection or in providing defense to the plants against such pathogen. In this chapter, we have focused on plant hormone based intricate defense response and the counter-defense mechanism of bacteria, fungi, and viruses through hormone alteration during their interaction. This may help in the development of the hormone-based breeding approaches intending to get better biotic stress resistance plants.