Rice-Pathogen Interaction and Rice Immunity

Dear Colleagues,

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the most important food crops in the world, providing the basis for the staple food of billions of people. However, rice is often attacked by a variety of pathogens during its growth, such as Magnaporthe oryzae, Rhizoctonia solani, Xanthomonas oryzae and Ustilaginoidea virens, resulting in significant agricultural losses. Therefore, in-depth research on the interaction mechanism between rice and pathogens, as well as rice's own immune system, is of great significance for improving rice's disease resistance and ensuring food security.

As research progresses, rice has developed interesting and complex defense mechanisms to cope with the attacks of these pathogens. In addition to a basic defense, rice has also acquired the ability to recognize pathogens and produce dynamic molecular defense responses. The immune system of rice mainly includes innate immunity (PTI) and acquired immunity (ETI). Innate immunity initiates defense responses by recognizing pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), while acquired immunity activates stronger responses by recognizing pathogen effectors. Pathogens inhibit the immune response of rice by secreting effectors, and rice recognizes these effectors by evolving resistance genes (R genes), thereby triggering immune responses. In this process, signaling pathways such as calcium ions, reactive oxygen species, and hormone signals (such as salicylic acid and jasmonic acid) jointly regulate the immune response of rice. In addition, non-coding RNA also plays an important role in rice immunity by regulating gene expression.

A better understanding of rice's defense mechanisms at the molecular level can provide information for effective pathogen control programs. By analyzing the rice–pathogen interaction mechanism, scientists have bred a variety of disease-resistant rice varieties. Future research will further reveal the complex immune signaling network and use gene editing and molecular breeding techniques to breed rice varieties with more broad-spectrum resistance to support global food security.

This Special Issue aims to highlight new findings or the utilization of molecular research in the following areas:

• Mechanisms of rice–pathogen interaction;
• Genetic improvement of rice disease-resistant germplasm;
• Disease-resistant rice cultivar breeding;
• Methods of inoculation and rating investigation;
• Mapping and cloning of resistance genes;
• Molecular genetic analysis of resistance (GWAS, etc.).

We are inviting articles (original research, reviews, methods, short communications, short reports) to expand our current understanding of the rice defense response.

Dr. Lifang Zou
Prof. Dr. Xinhua Ding
Dr. Zhengyin Xu
Dr. Youlun Xiao
Guest Editors

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• rice yield and immunity
• crop genetic improvement
• genome editing
• disease resistance
• rice–pathogen interaction
• biotic stress