Soil-borne diseases are those diseases caused by the pathogens which developed in the soil. These pathogens may be fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, viruses, and nematodes. They use plants as a host for their development using soil as appropriate environmental conditions. Soil-borne diseases include many destructive diseases, such as Phytophthora blight or root and stem rot, Pythium damping-off, Fusarium wilt or root rot, Verticillium wilt, Rhizoctonia root, and hypocotyl rot, bacterial wilt, white mold, clubroot, cyst nematode, and Wheat Mosaic Virus, which pose a major threat to global food security and agricultural sustainability.

Plants have evolved diverse immune strategies to combat pathogens. To counteract this, phytopathogens have evolved intricate virulence mechanisms to suppress plant defense responses and facilitate their infection. A deep understanding of the mechanisms of soil-borne disease resistance is also crucial for developing disease control technologies. Some new disease control technologies which are safe and environmentally friendly have shown great potential. Microbiota-mediated stimulation of plant innate immunity through defense priming or inducing systemic resistance has been described to enhance resistance to various phytopathogens. Enhancement of plant defense response by applying biological factors derived from microbes [e.g., pathogen-/microbe-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs/MAMPs)] is also a promising approach for disease control. These biological factors can efficiently activate plant immunity and are known as plant immunity inducers.

Although significant progress has been made in the field of plant-microbe interactions, there are still many unknowns regarding plant resistance to soil-borne diseases. Therefore, it is urgent for us to dissect the genetic basis of plant resistance and finally develop effective strategies against soil-borne plant diseases. In this Research Topic, we aim to collect manuscripts covering the advanced knowledge, techniques, perspectives, and outlooks on the study of plant resistance to soil-borne diseases.

We welcome submissions of original research papers, reviews, and new methods and ideas related, but not limited, to the following topics:

• Identification of novel defense-related genes conferring plant disease resistance to soil-borne diseases
• Functional characterization and evolutionary analyses of soil-borne pathogen effectors
• Identification and characterization of plant immunity inducers
• Engineering plant resistance to soil-borne diseases by genome editing technology
• Microbiota-mediated plant resistance to soil-borne pathogens
• Applications of omics (such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and epigenomics) or novel approaches to understand plant resistance to soil-borne diseases

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Frontiers in Plant Science

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