Suppressing chlorophyll degradation by silencing <i>OsNYC3</i> improves rice resistance to <i>Rhizoctonia solani</i>, the causal agent of sheath blight
Wenlei Cao, Huimin Zhang, Yong Zhou, Jianhua Zhao, Shuaibing Lu, Xiaoqiu Wang, Xijun Chen, Liming Yuan, Haiying Guan, Guangda Wang, Wangxin Shen, David De Vleesschauwer, Zhiqiang Li, Xiaopin Shi, Junfei Gu, Min Guo, Zhiming Feng, Zongxiang Chen, Yafang Zhang, Xuebiao Pan, Wende Liu, Guohua Liang, Changjie Yan, Keming Hu, Qiaoquan Liu, Shimin Zuo
Abstract
Necrotrophic fungus Rhizoctonia solani Kühn (R. solani) causes serious diseases in many crops worldwide, including rice and maize sheath blight (ShB). Crop resistance to the fungus is a quantitative trait and resistance mechanism remains largely unknown, severely hindering the progress on developing resistant varieties. In this study, we found that resistant variety YSBR1 has apparently stronger ability to suppress the expansion of R. solani than susceptible Lemont in both field and growth chamber conditions. Comparison of transcriptomic profiles shows that the photosynthetic system including chlorophyll biosynthesis is highly suppressed by R. solani in Lemont but weakly in YSBR1. YSBR1 shows higher chlorophyll content than that of Lemont, and inducing chlorophyll degradation by dark treatment significantly reduces its resistance. Furthermore, three rice mutants and one maize mutant that carry impaired chlorophyll biosynthesis all display enhanced susceptibility to R. solani. Overexpression of OsNYC3, a chlorophyll degradation gene apparently induced expression by R. solani infection, significantly enhanced ShB susceptibility in a high-yield ShB-susceptible variety '9522'. However, silencing its transcription apparently improves ShB resistance without compromising agronomic traits or yield in field tests. Interestingly, altering chlorophyll content does not affect rice resistance to blight and blast diseases, caused by biotrophic and hemi-biotrophic pathogens, respectively. Our study reveals that chlorophyll plays an important role in ShB resistance and suppressing chlorophyll degradation induced by R. solani infection apparently improves rice ShB resistance. This discovery provides a novel target for developing resistant crop to necrotrophic fungus R. solani.