Location: Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center
Project Number: 6028-21000-012-012-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2023
End Date: Aug 15, 2025
Objective:
Rice blast disease is the most threatening rice disease for rice production and genetic control has been effective to prevent crop losses. The overall objective is to investigate molecular mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions to develop environmentally benign disease management strategies in USA. Specifically:
1. Evaluate phenotypic responses including blast reaction to common US blast races of two mapping populations derived from the cross of black hull awned US weedy rice (resistant) with a Spanish weedy rice (susceptible), and ShuFeng121 (resistant) with LTH (susceptible) to identify genetic markers and candidate genes for novel blast resistance genes under greenhouse conditions in 2024 and 2025.
2. Perform rice and pathogen genome sequencing to identify resistance genes in rice and avirulence genes in pathogen.
3. Investigate mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions for developing durable resistance strategies.
Approach:
Objective 1: Mapping populations and parents will be grown under greenhouse and field conditions in the Summer of 2024 and Summer of 2025. The population plants and parents will be screened with the blast races under greenhouse conditions. The plants will be scored based on the reaction to the blast pathogen using a visual rating of 0-5 rating system where 0-2 indicating resistant and 3-5 susceptible.
Objective 2: DNA will be extracted and genomes of rice and blast fungus will be sequenced to identify the resistance genes from weedy rice and and ShuFeng 121 and avirulence genes from blast fungus with phenotypes from the objective 1.
Objective3: The identified novel resistance genes from the objective 2 will be used to screen additional proteins involved in disease resistance with ProQuest™ Two-Hybrid System with Gateway Technology and identified interacting proteins will be verified in vivo using Bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) at DB NRRC and functional validation of identified genes will be carried on at UAPB.
