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Brazil develops varieties resistant to the main rice disease in Asia
Feb. 27, 2017
The first Brazilian strain of rice resistant to the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae has just been validated in Panama.
Oryzae is the main pathogen that plagues the culture in several Asian and American countries. The disease has not yet been detected in Brazil. New materials were developed through preventive genetic improvement by studying the disease and the pests of the main agricultural species before they reach the country.
The work was carried out by Embrapa Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (DF) and Embrapa Arroz e Feijão (GO), under the Embrapa Labex-USA Program of the Secretariat of International Relations (SRI), and was supported by the Agricultural Research Institute of Panama (IDIAP).
With this achievement, if the disease is detected in Brazil, farmers will already have the ability to opt for disease-resistant plants of irrigated rice, planted mainly in Rio Grande do Sul and dryland, and grown in several other Brazilian states. The cultivars that have been developed are adapted to the planting conditions in Brazil.
"Many consider Xanthomonas as the main threat faced by the rice crop. The bacterium has already penetrated countries close to Brazil, such as Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, and can enter the country at any time,” said the researcher responsible for the work, Márcio Elias Ferreira.
To develop the new materials, the researchers accessed the Embrapa Rice and Bean Germplasm Bank, home to 27,000 varieties of rice collected around the world. They identified three accesses, each containing a disease resistance gene.
"We selected three broad spectrum resistance genes, that is, genes that promote simultaneous resistance to various 'races' of Xanthomonas. The genes were introduced in the same variety to develop plants resistant to various races of Xanthomonas," said researcher Márcio Elias.
One of the advantages of studying a quarantine pathogen to act as a preventive is to know it in advance. It makes it possible to know how to fight it if it is introduced in the country. It usually takes a lot of time to develop symptom assessment protocols, know the biology of the organism, identify the resistance genes of the plants, perform adequate crosses, select resistant plants and develop new cultivars. There are several steps, and each requires a lot of time. Anticipating this and working in advance to find preventive solutions reduces costs and increases the efficiency of the process.
The newly developed varieties, in addition to the efforts to find a less costly solution to a possible future problem that the Brazilian agriculture may face, can play an important role in enabling scientists to work with the disease or the pest in advance. Preventive breeding is a good way to do so as it enables the national agriculture much more prepared to face the problem when it finally crosses borders.
Source: AgroNews
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