Natural mutation in <i>Stay‐Green (OsSGR)</i> confers enhanced resistance to rice sheath blight through elevating cytokinin content
Sheath blight (ShB), caused by Rhizoctonia solani, is a highly destructive disease in many crops worldwide and no major resistance genes are available. Here, we identified a sbr1 (sheath blight resistance 1) rice mutant, which shows enhanced ShB resistance and maintains wildtype agronomic traits including yield, but carries an undesired stay-green phenotype. Through map-based cloning and transgenic validation, we found that an insertion disrupting the Stay-Green (OsSGR) gene is responsible for sbr1 phenotypes. Mechanistically, the sbr1/Ossgr mutants reduce the expression of most OsCKX genes, which function in cytokinin (CK) degradation, to accumulate CK leading to ShB resistance. Importantly, knockout of OsCKX7, predominantly expressed in the leaf sheath and highly induced by R. solani, significantly enhances ShB resistance without stay-green phenotype nor yield penalty, showing high application potential. Thus, our study reveals novel insights that OsSGR and cytokinin play key roles in rice-R. solani interaction and generates a valuable ShB-resistant germplasm.
Authors
- Guiyun Zhang
- Mingfa Sun
- Wenfeng Shan
- Yu Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7859-4457)
- Zongxiang Chen
- Xijun Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9797-5522)
- Keming Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8053-7072)
- Chengcai Chu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8097-6115)
- Yiqin Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2783-8861)
- Shimin Zuo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9937-3418)
- Wenya Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6069-9181)
- Huimin Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8547-8243)
- Lei Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5708-0118)
- Zhiming Feng
- Guangda Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8938-1302)
- Jianhua Zhao
- Xiang Xue
- Yafang Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5624-862X)
Institutions
- South China Agricultural University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics (CN)
- Yangzhou Polytechnic Institute (CN)
- Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (CN)
- Yangzhou University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Plant Biotechnology Journal
- Published
- 2024-12-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.14540
- Citations
- 10
- Primary Topic
- Plant Disease Resistance and Genetics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 6.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- China Agricultural University
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
- Government of Jiangsu Province
- Huazhong Agricultural University
- Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions