Dry direct-seeded rice (dry-DSR) is typically sown deeply to circumvent the need for irrigation, and thus seedling emergence is a crucial trait affecting plant stand and yield. To breed elite cultivars that use less water and are climate-resilient, an understanding of the genomic regions and underlying genes that confer emergence in deeply sown dry-DSR would be highly advantageous. A combined diversity panel of 470 rice accessions (RDP1 plus aus subset of 3K RGP) was evaluated with 2.9 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to identify associations with dry-DSR traits in the field and component traits in a controlled-environment experiment. Using genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyses, we identified 18 unique QTLs on chromosomes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11, explaining phenotypic variance ranging from 2.6% to 17.8%. Three QTLs, namely, qSOE-1.1, qEMERG-AUS-1.2, and qEMERG-AUS-7.1, were co-located with previously reported QTLs for mesocotyl length. Among the identified QTLs, half were associated with the emergence of aus, and six were unique to the aus genetic group. Based on functional annotation, we identified eleven compelling candidate genes that primarily regulate phytohormone pathways such as cytokinin, auxin, gibberellic acid, and jasmonic acid. Prior studies indicated that these phytohormones play a critical role in mesocotyl length under deep sowing. This study provides new insight into the importance of aus and indica as desirable genetic resources to mine favorable alleles for deep-sowing tolerance in rice. The candidate genes and marker-tagged desirable alleles identified in this study should benefit rice breeding programs directly.

Rice blast is one of the main diseases in rice and can occur in different rice growth stages. Due to the complicated procedure of panicle blast identification and instability of panicle blast infection influenced by the environment, most cloned rice resistance genes are associated with leaf blast. In this study, a rice panicle blast resistance gene, Pb2, was identified by genome-wide association mapping based on the panicle blast resistance phenotypes of 230 Rice Diversity Panel 1 (RDP1) accessions with 700,000 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. A genome-wide association study identified 18 panicle blast resistance loci (PBRL) within two years, including 9 reported loci and 2 repeated loci (PBRL2 and PBRL13, PBRL10 and PBRL18). Among them, the repeated locus (PBRL10 and PBRL18) was located in chromosome 11. By haplotype and expression analysis, one of the Nucleotide-binding domain and Leucine-rich Repeat (NLR) Pb2 genes was highly conserved in multiple resistant rice cultivars, and its expression was significantly upregulated after rice blast infection. Pb2 encodes a typical NBS-LRR protein with NB-ARC domain and LRR domain. Compared with wild type plants, the transgenic rice of Pb2 showed enhanced resistance to panicle and leaf blast with reduced lesion number. Subcellular localization of Pb2 showed that it is located on plasma membrane, and GUS tissue-staining observation found that Pb2 is highly expressed in grains, leaf tips and stem nodes. The Pb2 transgenic plants showed no difference in agronomic traits with wild type plants. It indicated that Pb2 could be useful for breeding of rice blast resistance.

BACKGROUND: Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is an important rice disease occurring in all rice-growing areas. To manage blast disease effectively and in an environmentally friendly way, it is important to continually discover diverse resistant resources for breeding. In this study, genome-wide association study (GWAS) was used to map genes/loci resistant to rice blast in the open-access rice diversity panel 1 (RDP1), previously genotyped with a 44K single-nucleotide polymorphism array. Two geographically and genetically different M. oryzae isolates from Taiwan, D41-2 and 12YL-DL3-2, were used to challenge RDP1. Infected leaves were visually rated for lesion type (LT) and evaluated for proportion of diseased leaf area (%DLA) by image analysis software.
RESULTS: A total of 32 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were identified, including 6 from LT, 30 from DLA, and 4 from both LT and DLA. In all, 22 regions co-localized with previously reported resistance (R) genes and/or QTLs, including two cloned R genes, Pita and Ptr; 19 mapped R loci, and 20 QTLs. We identified 100 candidate genes encoding leucine-rich repeat-containing proteins, transcription factors, ubiquitination-related proteins, and peroxidases, among others, in the QTL intervals. Putative resistance and susceptibility haplotypes of the 32 QTL regions for each tested rice accessions were also determined.
CONCLUSIONS: By using Taiwanese M. oryzae isolates and image-based phenotyping for detailed GWAS, this study offers insights into the genetics underlying the natural variation of blast resistance in RDP1. The results can help facilitate the selection of desirable donors for gene/QTL validation and blast resistance breeding.