Overexpression of Enhances Rice Tolerance to Sheath Blight Caused by .

Sheath blight (ShB), caused by the necrotrophic fungus (), poses severe threats to global rice production. Developing a resistant variety with an ShB-resistance gene is one of most efficient and economical approaches to control the disease. Here, we identified a highly conserved chloroplast-localized stem-loop-binding protein encoding gene (), which shows great potential in developing an ShB-resistant variety. -knockout mutants exhibit chlorotic leaves and increased ShB susceptibility, whereas -overexpressing lines (-OE) display significantly enhanced resistance to , as well as to drought, and salinity stresses. Notably, -OE lines present a completely comparable grain yield to the wild type (WT). Transcriptomic analyses reveal that chloroplast transcripts and photosynthesis-associated genes maintain observably elevated stability in -OE plants versus WT plants following infection, which probably accounts for the enhanced ShB resistance of -OE. Our findings nominate the gene as a promising molecular target for developing a rice variety with stronger resistance to both and multi-abiotic stresses.