Genome-wide association study of rice genes and loci conferring resistance to Magnaporthe oryzae isolates from Taiwan

Background Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is an important rice disease occurring in all rice-growing areas. To manage blast disease effectively and in an environmentally friendly way, it is important to continually discover diverse resistant resources for breeding. In this study, genome-wide association study (GWAS) was used to map genes/loci resistant to rice blast in the open-access rice diversity panel 1 (RDP1), previously genotyped with a 44K single-nucleotide polymorphism array. Two geographically and genetically different M. oryzae isolates from Taiwan, D41-2 and 12YL-DL3-2, were used to challenge RDP1. Infected leaves were visually rated for lesion type (LT) and evaluated for proportion of diseased leaf area (%DLA) by image analysis software.