Dear Editor, Verticillium wilt caused by Verticillium dahliae Kleb.is the most destructive disease in cotton-growing areas around the world.The infection significantly reduces cotton yield and fiber quality due to leaf chlorosis,necrosis or wilting,leaf or boll abscission,and even plant death.The losses may reach up to 80％ of lint cotton yield (Wei et al.,2015).Currently,the acreage of Verticillium wilt-infected cotton fields in China is around 2.5 million hectares annually,which is equivalent to ca.50％ of the cotton planting area in the country with direct economic losses of ca.250-310 million US dollars (Li et al.,2015).However,disease control of Verticillium wilt is extremely difficult,since V.dahliae is persistent in the soil and no fungicide so far is available to cure commercial upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) once infected.Breeding of broad-spectrum resistant cultivars is therefore considered to be one of the most effective approaches (Jian et al.,2003).Unfortunately,the lack of genetic resources as well as effective target genes for use in genetic engineering strongly limit this breeding effort (Cheng and Jia,2001;Zhang et al.,2015),Thus,Verticillium wilt is regarded as “the cancer of cotton.”
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