Performance of transgenic Indica rice with Xa21 gene against Indian isolates of bacterial blight pathogen under field condition

Abstract

Bacterial blight, caused by the pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) is a serious disease of rice. Use of chemical control methods is not very successful to contain the disease. Hence, host plant resistance is considered as the best alternative strategy to manage the disease. Transgenic technology is proved to be one of the new approaches for transfer and deployment of resistance genes in rice. The transgenic IR72 line, carrying a cloned bacterial blight resistance gene Xa21 was evaluated against seven isolates of the bacterial blight pathogen under field condition along with resistant and susceptible checks. The results demonstrated that the transgenic line exhibited a wide spectrum of resistance against all the test isolates. The lesion length in transgenic line was significantly smaller compared to susceptible checks. The transgenic line showed higher level of resistance than the donor line IRBB21 against all the isolates of the pathogen tested. The yield performance of the transgenic was comparable with that of untransformed control under field conditions.