Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Natural Rice Rhizospheric Microbes Reduce Arsenic Uptake and Blast Infections in Rice.

Our recent work has shown that a rice thizospheric natural isolate, a (hereafter EA106) attenuates Arsenic (As) uptake in rice. In parallel, yet another natural rice rhizospheric isolate, a (hereafter EA105), was shown to inhibit rice blast pathogen . Considering the above, we envisaged to evaluate the importance of mixed stress regime in rice plants subjected to both As toxicity and blast infections.