Plant disease resistance protects plants from pathogens in two ways: by pre-formed structures and chemicals, and by infection-induced responses of the immune system. Relative to a susceptible plant, disease resistance is the reduction of pathogen growth on or in the plant (and hence a reduction of disease), while the term disease tolerance describes plants that exhibit little disease damage despite substantial pathogen levels. Disease outcome is determined by the three-way interaction of the pathogen, the plant and the environmental conditions (an interaction known as the disease triangle).
Defense-activating compounds can move cell-to-cell and systematically through the plants vascular system. However, plants do not have circulating immune cells, so most cell types exhibit a broad suite of antimicrobial defenses. Although obvious qualitative differences in disease resistance can be observed when multiple specimens are compared (allowing classification as "resistant" or "susceptible" after infection by the same pathogen strain at similar inoculum levels in similar environments), a gradation of quantitative' differences in disease resistance is more typically observed between plant strains or genotypes.  Plants consistently resist certain pathogens but succumb to others; resistance is usually specific to certain pathogen species or pathogen strains.