Conventional plant breeding has done much to improve cotton's tolerance to pests and diseases. However, fungal diseases such as Verticillium and Fusarium wilts remain important factors minting yield under certain environmental conditions. In particular, the increasing spread of an aggressive strain of Fusarium wilt in cotton-growing areas is causing growers concern. As yet, no genes providing immunity to the vascular wilt diseases have been identified in cotton. Conventional breeding has been used successfully to generate cotton cultivars with good fungal tolerance. However, tilts tolerance can still be improved and we see the use of transgene-derived antifungal proteins for enhanced host plant tolerance as an important adjunct to the development of cultivars by conventional breeding methods. Our goal is to identify genes that confer improved tolerance to wilt diseases and express these genes in transgenic cotton lines.