Proteins play role in fighting rice disease

Shanghai scientists have made headway into research against plant disease that could increase rice yields with less dependence on chemical pesticides.

The discovery will bring new insights into breeding rice with broader resistance to rice blast, a severe disease that causes a 10 percent loss of rice yield worldwide.

In China, all rice fields are prone to the disease, which leads to 3 billion kilograms of rice being lost each year.

In their research, the scientists identified a protein in rice, PICI1, that acts as a hub for the plant's immune mechanisms.

The protein can activate the plant's defense immunity via biosynthesis－and interestingly, they found that PICI1 is also targeted by the blast fungus, dampening immunity.

They also discovered that a type of immune receptor can increase the function of PICI1, thus activating more defense chemicals to obtain broad-spectrum blast resistance.

Researchers said that current methods using chemical pesticides to prevent and control field diseases have caused serious environmental pollution and food safety problems.

A paper about their research was published on the website of the journal Nature on Thursday.

"PICI1 is the protein that plays a pivotal role in allowing crops to acquire broad-spectrum resistance to rice blast," said He Zuhua, leading researcher on the team from the Shanghai-based Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

He said that rice seeds bred through this technique have been planted in over 1.5 million hectares over the past decade. There is no need to use farm chemicals to fight rice blast, and the crops have been growing well, according to He.

"We believe that the technology will work well on many other plants, too," He said.

"Moreover, we're considering breeding rice varieties resistant to multiple plant diseases by combining other research results," He said.

zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn