Investigation on Blast Resistance of Rice Genotypes Using Molecular Markers

Rice is staple food of 65% of the world's population, thus, identifying the resistant genes is very important in developing rice varieties. A. Kumar of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology in India and other scientists evaluated the blast resistance of 48 supreme Indian and exotic rice genotypes under induced disease occurence in the field.

The scientists reported that "the disease severity (%) and Area Under the Disease Progress Curve (AUDPC) was less than 45% and 1000, respectively, in all the resistant genotypes, while it was around 85% and higher than 2000 in the case of susceptible genotypes, respectively." There were significant differences in the resistance of the rice genotypes to rice blast fungus. Among the markers used, OPA-05, OPF-06, OPF-09, OPF-17, OPG-17, OPG-18, OPG-19, OPH-18, OPK-12, P-265-550 and P-286-350 were found to be effective molecular markers in selecting blast resistant genotypes. It was also discovered that the resistant genotypes have no allelic relationship, thus gene pyramiding could be used to improve the resistance to blast fungus.

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