Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rice blast, caused by the ascomycete Magnaporthe oryzae (Mo), imposes a major constraint on rice productivity. Managing the disease through the deployment of host resistance requires a close understanding of race structure of the pathogen population. RESULTS: The host/pathogen interaction between isolates sampled from four Mo populations collected across the rice-producing regions of China was tested using two established panels of differential cultivars. The clearest picture was obtained from the Chinese cultivar panel, for which the frequency of the various races, the race diversity index, the specific race isolate frequency, and the frequency of the three predominant races gave a consistent result, from which it was concluded that the pathogen population present in the southern production region was more diverse than that in the northeastern region. The four blast resistance genes Pi1, Pik, Pik-m, and Piz all still remain effective in the southern China rice production area, as does Pi1 in the northeastern region. The effectiveness of Pita, Pik-p, Piz, and Pib is restricted to single provinces. The distinctive resistance profile shown by the Chinese differential cultivar set implied the presence of at least five as yet unidentified blast resistance genes. CONCLUSIONS: The Chinese differential cultivar set proved to be more informative than the Japanese one for characterizing the race structure of the rice blast pathogen in China. A number of well characterized host resistance genes, in addition to some as yet uncharacterized ones, remain effective across the major rice production regions in China.