Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies a Rice Panicle Blast Resistance Gene Encoding NLR Protein.

Rice blast is a worldwide fungal disease that seriously affects the yield and quality of rice. Identification of resistance genes against rice blast disease is one of the effective ways to control this disease. However, panicle blast resistance genes, which are useful in the fields, have rarely been studied due to the difficulty in phenotypic identification and the environmental influences. Here, () was identified by a genome-wide association study (GWAS) based on the panicle blast resistance phenotypes of 230 Rice Diversity Panel I (RDP-I) accessions with 700,000 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. A total of 16 panicle blast resistance loci (PBRLs) within three years including one repeated locus PBRL3 located in chromosome 11 were identified. In addition, 7 genes in PBRL3 were identified as candidate genes by haplotype analysis, which showed significant differences between resistant and susceptible varieties. Among them, one nucleotide-binding domain and Leucine-rich Repeat (NLR) gene was highly conserved in multiple resistant rice cultivars, and its expression was significantly induced after rice blast inoculation. Evolutionary analysis showed that was a typical disease resistance gene containing coiled-coil, NB-ARC, and LRR domains. T-DNA insertion mutants and CRISPR lines of showed significantly reduced panicle blast resistance. These results indicate that is a panicle blast resistance gene and GWAS is a rapid method for identifying panicle blast resistance in rice.