Exploring Non-Host Resistance Against Rice Blast Via Programmed Cell Death in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Rice blast is a devastating disease caused by a filamentous fungal pathogen, Magnaporthe oryzae. It belongs to ascomycetes and is hemi-biotrophic in nature. The global food security is immensely affected by the deterioration of 30% of the crop production due to this disease. Although there are numerous previous studies on the disease resistance genes, but these could not solve to eliminate the disease from the field. Nevertheless, in nature there are plants which are not infected by rice blast and considered as non-host plants. Non-host plants have broad spectrum disease resistance against a pathogen race. Therefore, the NHR activates several defence strategies through cell communication resulting in hypersensitive responses, such as oxidative burst and programmed cell death (PCD) in an orchestrated manner at the infection site. These defence responses do not allow further spreading of the disease into the neighbouring cells. However, many NHR genes are reported earlier, still the exact mechanism of NHR and PCD in plants are not well understood. Thus, the present work focuses on the relative oxidative burst, ion leakage, and cell death corresponding to disease resistance across different mutants of Arabidopsis. This study can lead to the identification of the active protagonists from the non-host and help in engineering broad spectrum and durable disease resistant rice. Further, the cell death pathway will be studied to delineate its relevance if any in the host.