Rice blast: strategies and challenges for improving genetic resistance

Rice blast, caused by the fungus Pyricularia oryzae L., is considered one of main threats to world rice production. The development resistant cultivars best and sustainable control alternatives. Plant breeding efforts have been accelerated genetic mapping (linkage associative) marker assisted selection. On other hand, genomic editing techniques, such as meganucleases (MNs), Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), Transcription Activator-like Effector Nucleases (TALENs) Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindrome Repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9), can be used promote specific modifications. Likewise, transgenics also manipulate genes. In this sense, work aims characterize blast elucidate available biotechnological alternatives accelerate improved blast.