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Significance of the Disease

Figure 25

Rice is the staple food crop for a large part of the human population in the world today. Rice blast is by far the most important disease of the many diseases that attack rice. It is found wherever rice is grown, it is always important, and it is always a threat. Failures of entire rice crops have resulted directly from rice blast epidemics. The challenge for research continues to be to produce high quality food, in ever-increasing amounts at a lower costs, all while in the presence of an unforgiving and unrelenting pathogen. All of the plant disease management strategies and techniques that have been generated through research have been brought to bear against rice blast, but often with limited success. Rice blast has never been eliminated from a region in which rice is grown, and a single change in the way in which rice is grown or in the way resistance genes are deployed can result in significant disease losses even after years of successful management. This disease is a model that demonstrates the seriousness, elusiveness, and longevity of some plant diseases. Rice blast has been widely studied throughout the world. Many investigators have considered it to be a model disease for the study of genetics, epidemiology, molecular pathology of host parasite interactions and biology. Recent advances in understanding the genes that govern the avirulence (resistance) and virulence (susceptibility) interactions have been made with rice blast, and each advance has helped us to understand how other plant diseases work. It is also important to note that the entire genomes of the rice blast fungus and rice have been sequenced and that M. oryzae is the first plant pathogenic fungus to have its genome sequenced and released to the public.

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