Sustainable management of rice blast ( Magnaporthe grisea (Hebert) Barr): 50 years of research progress in molecular biology.

Abstract

Rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe grisea (Hebert) Barr) as a species has a very broad host range, infecting more than 40 Graminaceous hosts and some other non-grass hosts. The seedling stage, the rapid tillering stage after transplanting and the flower emergence stage have been identified as the most susceptible to rice blast. In developing countries, poor farmers cannot afford to control blast disease by the application of expensive fungicides. Therefore, sustainable rice blast disease management is more important for environmental concern, as well as for better financial returns to farmers in Third World countries. During the past few decades, a substantial amount of research has been conducted all over the globe to cope with blast fungus. In this chapter, we emphasize specifically the molecular biological aspect of the study on rice blast fungus over the past 50 years. Abbreviations used: BRV: blast-resistant varieties; HR: hypersensitive response; RBD: rice blast disease; RBF: rice blast fungus; RGAs: resistance gene analogues; ROI: reactive oxygen intermediates; PCR: polymerase chain reaction; RAPD: random amplification of polymorphic DNA; RFLP: restriction fragment length polymorphism.