*3.3. Disease Resistance*

Common diseases in rapeseed reported worldwide includes blackleg disease, caused by *Leptosphaeria maculans* [110,111] clubroot, caused by *Plasmodiopora brassicae* [112,113] and Sclerotinia stem rot, caused by *Sclerotinia sclerotiorum* [114,115]. The availability of genomic data and genetic maps of *Brassica* species, along with associated bioinformatics tools, allow deeper dissection of the genetic architecture of resistance. An efficient platform for identification of disease resistance genes can be implemented based on resistance gene analogs (RGAs) with the use of pangenomics data and confirmed SNP markers [68]. Taking this approach, Dolatabadian et al. [68] identified a total of 15,318 SNPs associated within 1030 *R*-genes in the *B. napus* pan-genome, which facilitates identification of candidate blackleg *R*-genes. Focusing on *Brassica* improvement for biotic stress, a study on pan-genomics in *B. oleracea* showed that the wild C genome species, *B. macrocarpa* contains the highest number of disease resistance gene candidates (1495) compared to the average RGAs of the cultivars (1450) [67], inferring that the crop wild relatives have high gene diversity with novel alleles which are suitable for introgression into cultivated *Brassica* species to improve varieties of *B. napus*.
