Improvement of resistance to rice blast and bacterial leaf streak by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutagenesis of and in rice ( L.).

Rice ( L.) is a staple food in many countries around the world, particularly in China. The production of rice is seriously affected by the bacterial leaf streak and rice blast, which can reduce rice yield or even cause it to fail to be harvested. In this study, susceptible material 58B was edited by CRISPR/Cas9, targeting a target of the gene and a target of the effector-binding element (EBE) of the gene, and the mutants were obtained by Agrobacterium-mediated method. The editing efficiency of the two targets in the T generation was higher than 90.09%, the homozygous mutants were successfully selected in the T generation, and the homozygous mutation rate of each target was higher than 26.67%. The expression of the edited and EBE of was significantly reduced, and the expression of defense responsive genes was significantly upregulated after infected with rice blast. The lesion areas of rice blast and bacterial leaf streak were significantly reduced in , and the resistance of both was effectively improved. Furthermore, the gene editing events did not affect the agronomic traits of rice. In this study, the resistance of to rice blast and bacterial leaf streak was improved simultaneously. This study provides a reference for using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/Cas9 (CRISPR/Cas9) to accelerate the improvement of rice varieties and the development of new materials for rice breeding.