Rice is a global food grain crop for more than one-third of the human population and a source for food and nutritional security. Rice production is subjected to various stresses; blast disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the major biotic stresses that has the potential to destroy total crop under severe conditions. In the present review, we discuss the importance of rice and blast disease in the present and future global context, genomics and molecular biology of blast pathogen and rice, and the molecular interplay between rice-M. oryzae interaction governed by different gene interaction models.

Sheath blight caused by necrotrophic fungus Rhizoctonia solani Kühn is one of the most serious diseases of rice. Use of high yielding semi dwarf cultivars with dense planting and high dose of nitrogenous fertilizers accentuates the incidence of sheath blight in rice. Its diverse host range and ability to remain dormant under unfavorable conditions make the pathogen more difficult to manage. As there are no sources of complete resistance, management through chemical control has been the most adopted method for sheath blight management.

Plants have evolved a sophisticated defense system that employs various hormone pathways to defend against attacks by insect pests. Cytokinin (CK) plays an important role in plant growth and stress tolerance, but the role of CKs in plant-insect interaction remains largely unclear. Here, we report that CKs act as a positive regulator in rice resistance against brown planthopper (BPH), a devastating insect pest of rice.

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.), an allotetraploid legume of the Fabaceae family, is able to thrive in tropical and subtropical regions and is considered as a promising oil seed crop worldwide. Increasing the content of oleic acid has become one of the major goals in peanut breeding because of health benefits such as reduced blood cholesterol level, antioxidant properties and industrial benefits such as longer shelf life.

The semi-dwarfing reduced height alleles Rht-D1b and Rht-B1b have been deployed in modern wheat cultivars throughout the world, but they increase susceptibility to Fusarium head blight (FHB). Here, we investigated the impact of the Rht1 genes on anther retention (AR) in relation to FHB resistance using four different sets of near-isogenic lines (NILs) with contrasting levels and types of background FHB resistance.

The gram pod borer is a major pest of chickpea, accounting for average annual yield losses to the tune of 40–50%. VIP3Aa, a class of insecticidal protein with different receptor binding site in the insect’s midgut compared to Bt-crystal protein, offers an alternative protection strategy against Lepidopteran insects. Here, we report evaluation of genetically engineered chickpea lines harboring codon modified Vip3Aa (cmVip3Aa) against the Lepidopteran insect pest, gram pod borer.

Here we report that overexpression of MYB37, a R2R3 MYB subgroup 14 transcription factor in Arabidopsis thaliana, confers hyposensitive phenotypes to exogenous salt. The results showed that compared with the wild type (Col-0), the overexpression of MYB37 significantly alleviated the salt stress symptoms of A. thaliana plants under NaCl stress. There was significantly less of a decrease in the contents of Chl a and Chl b in OE-1 and OE-2 compared with those in Col-0. In particular, the Chl a/b ratio was also higher than that in Col-0 under NaCl stress.

The Gram-negative bacteria Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae, the causative agent of bacterial leaf blight (BLB), received attention for being an economically damaging pathogen of rice worldwide. This damage prompted efforts to better understand the molecular mechanisms governing BLB disease progression. This research revealed numerous virulence factors that are employed by this vascular pathogen to invade the host, outcompete host defence mechanisms, and cause disease. In this review, we emphasize the virulence factors and molecular mechanisms that X. oryzae pv. oryzae uses to impair host defences, recent insights into the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying host-pathogen interactions and components of pathogenicity,

Mosses are one of the earliest diverging land plants that adapted to living on land. The BURP domain-containing proteins (BURP proteins) are plant-specific proteins that appeared when plants shifted from aquatic environments to land. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the BURP domain of higher plants is originated from lower land plants and divergent because of motif conversion. To discover the function of BURP protein in moss, rice transgenics with ectopic expression of PpBURP2 were subjected to different abiotic stresses treatments.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is an excellent source of starch, which is composed of amylopectin and amylose. Resistant starch (RS) is a starch product that is not easily digestible and absorbed in the stomach or small intestine and instead is passed on directly to the large intestine. Cereals high in RS may be beneficial to improve human health and reduce the risk of diet-related chronic diseases. It has been reported through chemical mutagenesis and RNA interference studies that starch branching enzymes (SBEs)