Potato NLRome provides a plug-in blueprint for precision disease resistance engineering

Abstract Potato late blight, caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans , remains one of the most serious threats to global food security. Plants rely on a sophisticated intracellular immune system centered on nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) receptors to perceive pathogen effectors. However, the rapid evolution of these effectors often renders individual resistance ( R ) genes ineffective within a short time frame. In a recent study, Wang et al . (Nature, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09678-5 ) addressed this long-standing challenge by constructing a section-wide NLRome for potato. This comprehensive resource enabled cloning three previously unknown late blight R genes and led to the proposal of a ‘plug-in’ strategy for modular and precision resistance engineering.