Current view on chitinase for plant defence

Plant pathogen is serious problem worldwide amongst the crop cultivars. Large number of plants suffers from range of infectious diseases caused by different pathogens, amongst them fungi are responsible for majority of infectious plant diseases that limiting the crop yield and impact the post-harvest quality of food. So it is important to protect the plants from fungal infection. Substantial approaches have been done with fungicides or heavy metals and by conventional breeding for combating the fungal diseases but so far no conclusive solution has been developed. Genetic engineering paves a new way to protect the plants from harmful fungal afflictions by introducing genes encoding chitinase enzyme that degrade the chitin, which are the key component of fungal cell wall.