Suggest four important steps to produce a disease resistant plant through conventional plant breeding technology.

Four important steps to produce a disease-resistant plant through conventional plant breeding technology are:

1. Screening for resistance: This involves identifying plants within a population that exhibit natural resistance to the target disease. This can be done through field observations, laboratory tests (e.g., pathogen inoculation), or both. Resistant plants will show minimal or no symptoms of the disease even when exposed to the pathogen. This step is crucial as it provides the starting material for the breeding program.

2. Hybridization: Once resistant plants are identified, they are crossed with desirable plants that may lack the disease resistance. This process combines the desirable traits of both parents into the offspring. The goal is to transfer the disease resistance gene(s) from the resistant parent to the desirable parent while maintaining other desirable characteristics such as yield, quality, and adaptation to the environment.

3. Selection: The offspring from the hybridization process are screened to identify those that have inherited the disease resistance. This often involves multiple generations of selection to ensure that the resistance is stable and heritable. Phenotypic selection (observing the plant's response to disease) and genotypic selection (using molecular markers to identify the resistance genes) are often employed to identify superior individuals.

4. Evaluation and release: After several generations of selection, the most promising disease-resistant lines are rigorously evaluated in multiple environments to assess their stability and adaptability. This process includes evaluating their performance under different conditions, including disease pressure, climate, and soil type. Once the superior lines are proven consistent and stable, they are released as new varieties for farmers to cultivate.