Ecology and Epidemiology of wheat blast

PERELLO ANALIA; VERONICA FABIANA CONSOLO; MARTINEZ IVAN

Wheat Blast

CRC PRESS

Lugar: Boca Raton; Año: 2020; p. 105 - 124

6.1 INTRODUCTIONMagnaporthe oryzae (synonym Pyricularia oryzae) is a new fungal disease on wheat plants that is a serious threat and requires worldwide attention. It is considered a highly destructive pathogen given the yield failures and the significant economic losses. The disease is known as ?Brusone? or ?wheat blast? (WB) and was initially confined to South America but has recently emerged in Southeast Asia (Singh et al., 2016).A typical symptom of wheat blast is the head infection, which is common anddestructive in the field (Figure 6.1). The pathogen directly strikes the wheat ear and can shrivel and deform the grain (Martinez et al., 2019). Although the disease appears sporadically on wheat, other grasses are secondary hosts and for this reason rotations do not control it. On the other hand, the disease has an irregular frequency of outbreaks which makes it hard to understand and predict the precise conditions for disease development, or to methodically select resistant wheat lines.The fungus is physiologically and genetically complex, so even after more thanthree decades, scientists do not fully understand how it interacts with wheat or which genes in wheat confer durable resistance (CIMMYT, 2016).