This book, Biotic Stress Management in Rice: Molecular Approaches, addresses biotic stress of rice and its management through molecular approaches. It focuses on the biotechnological aspects of rice with the aim of reducing the fungicide and insecticides and ultimately ensuring safety of rice as a food as well as the environment. Rice is an important crop in much of the Asia-Pacific region, and there are a number of threats to rice production, including fungal, viral, and bacterial diseases and insect pests, both in temperate and tropical countries, which can cause the significant economic loss. Remarkable efforts are being made by scientists and breeders to raise rice productivity and safety by modifying and manipulating rice plants to survive under different types of stresses. The book provides an understanding of the genetic basis of resistance and susceptibility and goes on to present studies directed to understand the host-plant interaction in rice that have given rise to specialized breeding programs for resistance to diseases and insect-pests. In addition to these advancements in molecular breeding, marker-assisted selection and transgenic approaches open new ways to increase resistance in rice for better production under several biotic stresses. This book covers the most recent advancements and research strategies of molecular breeding, transgenic approaches, and other tools for effective biotic stress management in rice. This book should find a prominent place on the shelves of new plant breeders, biotechnologists, plant pathologists and entomologists working in academic and commercial rice research programs, and in the libraries of research establishments. Review “The major objective of this book is on how researchers make efforts for the improvement of rice crops by using different molecular and biotechnological approaches. For this book, the authors present the recent DNA-based markers, genomic tools, biotechnological techniques and some new bioinformatics tools for some of the most significant biotic stress tolerant genes. Marker-assisted selection application in rice breeding programs like screening resistant plants from a germplasm and genotyping breeding populations are also discussed and give some new information. The discussed transgenic, genomics tools and molecular markers have been proven to work from different studies published recently, from rice germplasm screening, results of fine mapping, and gene pyramiding methods for the impairments of new rice varieties." Prashant Vikram, Associate Scientist, Genetic Resource Program, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Texcoco, México About the Author Md. Shamim, PhD, is an Assistant Professor cum- Jr.-Scientist in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering at Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, India. He is the author or co-author of 25 peer-reviewed journal articles, eight book chapters, and two conference papers. He also has written two books. He is editorial board member of several national and international journals. Recently, Dr. Shamim has received the Young Scientist Award (2016) for his research work on biotechnology from the Bioved Research Institute of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, Allahabad, India. Before joining Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Dr. Shamim worked at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, where he was engaged in heat responsive gene regulation in wheat. Dr. Shamim has also worked at the Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, India, on molecular and phylogeny analysis of several Fusarium fungus of pulses, and also performed research with the Biochemistry Department of the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Institute on plant protease inhibitor isolation and their characterization. He is a member of the soil microbiology core research group at Bihar Agricultural University (BAU), where he helps with providing appropriate direction and
