Development of Virulence Test Methods for Neck and Panicle Blast Disease

Abstract

Isolates of the rice blast fungus show a range of tissue-specificities infecting leaves, nodes, neck and panicles. Although neck and panicle blast cause significantly greater yield losses than the leaf blast, virulence tests of the blast isolates have been performed only rice leaves instead of neck and panicles. In this study, we have developed a virulence test method for neck and panicle blast. We selected three representative isolates from each of leaf, neck, and panicle blast. We observed that severe disease lesions developed on the neck and the panicles when the infected rice plants were incubated in a dew chamber for 48 h instead of 24 h when tested on leaves. Unlike the leaf blast, a typical lesion on the neck and panicles appeared after 14 days post-infection as opposed to 7 days with leaf blast. This method will be applied to examine tissue-specificity of the rice blast fungus isolates.

Keywords

• Leaf blast
• Neck blast
• Panicle blast
• Rice blast