Expecting that the different characteristics of rice plants against rice blast fungus, that is, susceptibility of the weaker cultivar, Sasanishiki and resistance of the stronger cultivars, Fukuyuki and Fukunishiki, may be due to the absence or presence of anti-fungus compounds in the rice plants, the anti-rice blast fungus substances in these three kinds of rice plants were explored. We found f...

Rice blast disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the most destructive disease causing huge losses to rice yield in different parts of the world. Therefore, an attempt has been made to find out the resistance by screening and studying the genetic diversity of eighty released rice varieties by National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack (NRVs) using molecular markers linked to twelve major...

Rice blast, caused by the fungus, Magnaporthe grisea, is a common disease of rice in Arkansas. The disease has reached epidemic levels previously in Arkansas on susceptible cultivars. Also, it has been established that artificially infected seeds placed on the soil surface could initiate disease in small plots. The research reported here was conducted in small plots to determine if naturally in...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a major staple food crop for half of the world’s population. The International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, estimates that in order to feed the growing global population, rice production must increase by another one-third by the year 2020. Magnaporthe grisea (anamorph, Pyricularia oryzae) causes rice blast disease (Figure 1) and is the most destructive pathoge...

ABSTRACT The effect of elevated atmospheric CO(2) concentration on rice blast and sheath blight disease severity was studied in the field in northern Japan for 3 years. With free-air CO(2) enrichment (FACE), rice plants were grown in ambient and elevated ( approximately 200 to 280 mumol mol(-1) above ambient) CO(2) concentrations, and were artificially inoculated with consist of Magnaporthe ory...

Rice is a staple food source for more than three billion people worldwide. However, rice is vulnerable to diseases, the most destructive among them being rice blast, which is caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae (anamorph Pyricularia oryzae). This fungus attacks rice plants at all stages of development, causing annual losses of approximately 10-30% in various rice producing regions. Syntheti...

Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is one of the most devastating diseases. The two major subspecies of Asian cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.), indica and japonica, have shown obvious differences in rice blast resistance, but the genomic basis that underlies the difference is not clear. We performed a genomewide comparison of the major class of resistant gene family, the nucleotide-bind...

WRKY transcription factors and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades have been shown to play pivotal roles in the regulation of plant defense responses. We previously reported that OsWRKY53-overexpressing rice plants showed enhanced resistance to the rice blast fungus. In this study, we identified OsWRKY53 as a substrate of OsMPK3/OsMPK6, components of a fungal PAMP-responsive MAPK c...

The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is a serious pathogen that jeopardises the world's most important food-security crop. Ten common Malaysian rice varieties were examined for their morphological, physiological and genomic responses to this rice blast pathogen. qPCR quantification was used to assess the growth of the pathogen population in resistant and susceptible rice varieties. The chlo...

We used rice dwarf1 (d1) mutants lacking a single-copy Galpha gene and addressed Galpha's role in disease resistance. d1 mutants exhibited a highly reduced hypersensitive response to infection by an avirulent race of rice blast. Activation of PR gene expression in the leaves of the mutants infected with rice blast was delayed for 24 h relative to the wild type. H(2)O(2) production and PR gene e...