Development of rice conidiation media for Ustilaginoidea virens

PLoS One. 2019 Oct 24;14(10):e0217667. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217667. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Rice false smut, caused by the ascomycete Ustilaginoidea virens, is a serious disease of rice worldwide. Conidia are very important infectious propagules of U. virens, but the ability of pathogenic isolates to produce conidia frequently decreases in culture, which influences pathogenicity testing. Here, we developed tissue media with rice leaves or panicles that stimulate conidiation of U. virens. Among the tested media, 0.10 g/ml panicle medium was most efficient for conidiation. Whereas, some rice leaf media more effectively increased conidiation than panicle media except 0.10 g/ml panicle medium, and certain non-filtered tissue media were better than their filtered counterparts. Although the conidia induced in rice tissue media were smaller, they were able to germinate on potato sucrose agar medium and infect rice normally. The rice tissue medium is also workable in inducing conidia for conidiation-defective isolates. This method provides a foundation for the production of conidia by U. virens that will be widely applicable in pathogenicity testing as well as in genetic analyses for false smut resistance in rice cultivars.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Culture Media / chemistry
  • Culture Media / pharmacology
  • Disease Resistance / genetics
  • Host-Pathogen Interactions
  • Hypocreales / physiology*
  • Inflorescence / chemistry
  • Inflorescence / microbiology
  • Mycology / methods
  • Oryza / chemistry
  • Oryza / genetics
  • Oryza / microbiology*
  • Plant Diseases / genetics
  • Plant Diseases / microbiology*
  • Plant Leaves / chemistry
  • Plant Leaves / microbiology
  • Spores, Fungal / drug effects
  • Spores, Fungal / growth & development*

Substances

  • Culture Media

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0300700 to Chaoxi Luo), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2662017JC003 to Chaoxi Luo) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31701736 to Weixiao Yin). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.