Engineering plant immune circuit: walking to the bright future with a novel toolbox

Summary Plant pathogens destroy crops and cause severe yield losses, leading to an insufficient food supply to sustain the human population. Apart from relying on natural plant immune systems to combat biological agents or waiting for the appropriate evolutionary steps to occur over time, researchers are currently seeking new breakthrough methods to boost disease resistance in plants through genetic engineering. Here, we summarize the past two decades of research in disease resistance engineering against an assortment of pathogens through modifying the plant immune components (internal and external) with several biotechnological techniques. We also discuss potential strategies and provide perspectives on engineering plant immune systems for enhanced pathogen resistance and plant fitness. Generating and developing disease‐resistant plant varieties are required to maintain a sustainable food stockpile and the environment. The ability to engineer immune regulatory components through several approaches, such as genetic transformation, CRISPR/Cas‐mediated gene knockdown/knockout, decoy engineering, pathogen effector‐based strategy, RNAi‐based biocontrol, and VIGS‐mediated gene suppression, can activate diverse adaptive and defence responses. This review summarizes and discusses the recent advances toward engineering disease resistance and future perspectives. Created with www.BioRender.com.