Rice blast is one of the most devastating diseases of rice. Utilization of resistance cultivars is the most effective, economical and environment-friendly approach to control the blast disease. In the past decade, with the development of deep researches in plant innate immunity, molecular biology of plant resistances, and genomics of rice and Magnaporthe oryzae, a range of plant defense-related genes which are implicated in host recognition of pathogens, host defense signaling, antifungal proteins and elicitors of the pathogens, etc., have been identified and cloned, providing some novel gene resources, breeding strategies and techniques for enhancing rice blast resistance. In this review, we summarized the main blast defense-related genes cloned recently for their enhancement in blast resistance and application in rice molecular breeding programs, and put forward a molecular breeding strategy which is to stack some key genes regulating different defense pathways through co-integration transformation and over-expressing of the target genes by means of transgenic techniques.