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A Rare Sugar, d-Allose, Confers Resistance to Rice Bacterial Blight with Upregulation of Defense-Related Genes in Oryza sativa

First, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, and thirteenth authors: Faculty of Agriculture, Gene Research Center, and Rare Sugar Research Center, Kagawa University, Miki, Kagawa, 761-0795, Japan; fourth author: National Agricultural Research Center for Kyushu Okinawa Region (NARO), Koshi, Kumamoto, 861-1192, Japan; ninth author: Mitsui Chemicals Agro Co. Ltd., Yasu, Shiga, 520-2342, Japan; tenth author: Shikoku Research Institute Inc., Yashima-nishi, Takamatsu, 761-0192, Japan; and twelfth author: National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS), Tsukuba, 305-8602, Japan.

We investigated responses of rice plant to three rare sugars, d-altrose, d-sorbose, and d-allose, due to establishment of mass production methods for these rare sugars. Root growth and shoot growth were significantly inhibited by d-allose but not by the other rare sugars. A large-scale gene expression analysis using a rice microarray revealed that d-allose treatment causes a high upregulation of many defense-related, pathogenesis-related (PR) protein genes in rice. The PR protein genes were not upregulated by other rare sugars. Furthermore, d-allose treatment of rice plants conferred limited resistance of the rice against the pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae but the other tested sugars did not. These results indicate that d-allose has a growth inhibitory effect but might prove to be a candidate elicitor for reducing disease development in rice.

Additional keywords:induced resistance.