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Goals of our study
Just as humans get sick, plants also suffer from diseases. Infectious diseases of staple crops such as rice and potato have repeatedly caused famines and migration throughout human history. Like infectious diseases in humans and animals, plant diseases can have a major social impact.
Plant pathology is the field of science that studies the relationship between plants, human activity, and disease. Why do plants become diseased? How do plants protect themselves from disease? What can we do to prevent the outbreak and spread of diseases in crops? To answer these questions, we conduct research on the blast fungus that infects grasses, using approaches that range from classical Mendelian genetics to state-of-the-art molecular biology.
Our current main focus is wheat blast. This pathogen was first identified in Brazil in 1985, and later spread to neighboring countries in South America, causing serious damage. More recently, it has reached Bangladesh and Zambia and is becoming a pandemic disease. In our laboratory, we are working to elucidate how this pathogen evolved and emerged, while also searching for and identifying wheat blast resistance genes and developing resistant wheat cultivars by introducing these genes.
Elucidating the Mechanisms Underlying Host Specialization in the Blast Fungus
How do pathogens infect plants? And how do healthy plants protect themselves against pathogen invasion? With the goal of building a molecular basis for the development of disease-resistant crops, we focus on the mechanisms underlying host specialization in the blast fungus and investigate both the evolution of pathogen virulence and, in particular, the genetic basis of resistance in wheat and other cereal crops.
The blast fungus (Pyricularia oryzae) is a fungal plant pathogen that infects a wide range of grasses. Interestingly, this fungus shows host specialization corresponding to particular host genera (Figure). For example, isolates of the blast fungus obtained from plants of the genus Oryza can infect rice, but cannot infect grasses belonging to other genera. To clarify the genetic mechanisms that determine this specificity, our group uses genetic and molecular biological approaches to isolate avirulence genes in the blast fungus and resistance genes that control disease resistance in plants.
For more details: Research at Kobe
Breeding for Wheat Blast Resistance
For widely cultivated wheat, resistance breeding is one of the most economical methods of disease control. However, only a limited number of wheat cultivars possess resistance to the recently emerged wheat blast pathogen. We are searching for beneficial genetic resources of resistance for breeding and attempting to isolate those resistance genes. To date, our laboratory has reported five resistance genes ahead of the rest of the world, and we are now working with research institutes in Japan and abroad to introduce these genes into major wheat cultivars grown in Japan and other countries.
In addition to the genes described above, we are also seeking new sources of resistance by exploring wheat blast resistance genes hidden in wild relatives of wheat, particularly species of the genus Aegilops(), as well as in familiar cultivated grasses such as oat and rice. We are also working to develop technologies that will enable the effective use of these genetic resources.
→ For more details: Kobe University Graduate School of Agricultural Science: Research Highlights
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