Rice false smut pathogen: implications for mycotoxin contamination, current status, and future perspectives

Lei Zhou; Mustansar Mubeen; Yasir Iftikhar; Hongxia Zheng; Zhenhao Zhang; Junli Wen; Raja Asad Ali Khan; Ashara Sajid; Manoj Kumar Solanki; Muhammad Aamir Sohail; Ajay Kumar; Ehab El Sayed Massoud; Liezhong Chen

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1344831

Rice false smut pathogen: implications for mycotoxin contamination, current status, and future perspectives

Front Microbiol. 2024 Mar 20:15:1344831. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1344831. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory for Managing Biotic and Chemical Threats to the Quality and Safety of Agro-products, Institute of Agro-product Safety and Nutrition, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, China.
² Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agriculture, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan.
³ College of Plant Protection, Hainan University, Haikou, China.
⁴ Department of Life Sciences and Biological Sciences, IES University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.
⁵ Plant Cytogenetics and Molecular Biology Group, Institute of Biology, Biotechnology and Environmental Protection, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Poland.
⁶ National Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Genetics, Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
⁷ Amity University of Biotechnology, Amity University, Noida, India.
⁸ Biology Department, Faculty of Science and Arts in Dahran Aljnoub, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Rice serves as a staple food across various continents worldwide. The rice plant faces significant threats from a range of fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens. Among these, rice false smut disease (RFS) caused by Villosiclava virens is one of the devastating diseases in rice fields. This disease is widespread in major rice-growing regions such as China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and others, leading to significant losses in rice plantations. Various toxins are produced during the infection of this disease in rice plants, impacting the fertilization process as well. This review paper lightens the disease cycle, plant immunity, and infection process during RFS. Mycotoxin production in RFS affects rice plants in multiple ways, although the exact phenomena are still unknown.

Keywords: RFS; infection process; mycotoxin; rice; smut.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work supported by the high-talent introduction and continuous training fund to LZ (grant no: 10300000021LL05) and State Key Laboratory for Managing Biotic and Chemical Threats to the Quality and Safety of Agro-products (grant no. 2021DG700024-KF202312).