Abstract
Background: Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, seriously damages the yield and quality of rice worldwide. Pi-ta is a durable resistance gene that combats M. oryzae carrying AVR-Pita1. However, the distribution of the Pi-ta gene in rice germplasms in Yunnan Province has been inadequately studied. Methods: We analyzed the potential molecular evolution pattern of Pi-ta alleles by examining the diversity in the coding sequence (CDS) among rice varieties. Results: The results revealed that 95% of 405 rice landraces collected from different ecological regions in Yunnan Province carry Pi-ta alleles. We identified 17 nucleotide variation sites in the CDS regions of the Pi-ta gene across 385 rice landraces. These variations led to the identification of 28 Pi-ta haplotypes, encoding 12 novel variants. Among these, 5 Pi-ta haplotypes (62 rice landraces) carried R alleles. The evolutionary cluster and network of the Pi-ta haplotypes suggested that the Pi-ta S alleles were the ancestral alleles, which could potentially evolve into R variants through base substitution. Conclusions: This study suggests that Pi-ta alleles are diverse in the rice landraces in Yunnan, and the Pi-ta sites resistant to blast evolved from the susceptible plants of the rice landraces. These results provide the basis for breeding resistant varieties.