Elucidation of the molecular mechanism during non-host resistance in Arabidopsis thaliana against Rhizoctonia solani

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food for more than half of world’s population, majorly for underdeveloped countries. Current world population is around 7.9 billion, which will be 9 billion by 2050. Feeding this huge population itself a challenge and burden on agricultural practice. Average rice crop loss is about 37.4%, rice feeds 25 people per hectare and it must be 47% per hectare by 2050. The situation is more aggravated due to shrinkage in agricultural lands and loss of crops worth of billions due to pathogens, among which fungus causes 2/3 of total damage. Rhizoctonia solani Kühn (teleomorph = Thanatephorus cucumeris Donk) is a ubiquitous soil-borne plant pathogenic fungus which causes significant yield losses in many agriculturally important crops . In nature the sheath blight is caused by Rhizoctonia solani and there has been no controlling measure neither any chemical pesticide that kill it. As rice is a host and Arabidopsis is a non-host to R. solani the causative agent of sheath blight we sought that there might be possible disease resistance mechanism that might be providing some sort of disease resistance against R. solani. We found that the hormone pathway mutants of mpk4, pad4, ssi and jar1 behaved differentially with infection. Further, we screened the EMS generated mutant showed infection cushion at an early hour of infection depicting the fact that the gene might be very important in controlling the entry of the pathogen. Further, to understand the plausible way how it controls the disease the protein-protein interaction studies will be performed and the other molecular architecture and their regulation will be studied.