Abstract
Healthy roots enable a plant to make full use of available water and nutrients. Plant parasitic nematodes are a neglected but economically group if plant pests that damage plant roots and cause annual crop losses estimated at US$120 billion p.a. New resources, in the form of the complete annotated genome of the model nematode, Caenorhabdhitis elegans, and more recently genomes of two root-knot nematode and one cyst nematode, provide new information to identify new target genes in plant parasitic nematodes. Using these resources, a range of transgenic dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous plants (wheat and sugarcane) have been generated containing synthetic resistance genes to confer resistance to different nematode parasites. Progress will be prevented on this research, including the results of nematode challenge experiments from two different approaches that show promise in conferring host plant resistance to economically important plant parasitic nematodes.