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Title: A new micro-chamber method for selecting sheath blight tolerant rice

Author
item Pinson, Shannon
item Fjellstrom, Robert
item TABIEN, RODANTE
item McClung, Anna
item WANG, YEUGUANG

Submitted to: Experiment Station Bulletins
Publication Type: Experiment Station
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/1/2007
Publication Date: 7/12/2007
Citation: Pinson, S.R., Fjellstrom, R.G., Tabien, R.E., Mcclung, A.M., Wang, Y. 2007. A new micro-chamber method for selecting sheath blight tolerant rice. Experiment Station Bulletins. http://beaumont.tamu.edu/eLibrary/Newsletter/2007_Highlights_in_Research.pdf. pp.IX-XI.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Dr. Shannon Pinson’s role as an applied Plant Geneticist is to develop new knowledge and techniques that allow breeders to be more efficient and successful at developing improved rice varieties. While visiting various rice researchers in Bangladesh in 2002, Dr. Pinson gained some knowledge and ideas that have since led to the development of a new method for evaluating rice lines for sheath blight susceptibility. This new method, known formally as the micro-chamber method, but informally referred to at the “Coke bottle method”, offers several advantages over the previously used field-plot evaluations – including requiring less seed, less labor, and less plant-growth time. Furthermore, the new method is conducted under controlled lab conditions, freeing breeders from the previous restriction of a single growing season per year under difficult field conditions. The most widely accepted method for evaluating rice for sheath blight susceptibility is to inoculate densely-planted field plots with Rhizoctonia solani, the fungus that causes sheath blight disease; allow the pathogen to grow over time; then rate the plots for severity of disease symptoms.