Scientists from Germany are developing rice varieties resistant to a bacterial disease outbreak in Africa

The "Healthy Crops" international research consortium led by Professor Dr. Wolf B. Frommer from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) is developing disease-resistant rice varieties. In eLife, the authors now report on the discovery of a recent bacterial outbreak in Tanzania—and describe how they modified an African rice variety to make it resistant to the pathogen. Bacterial blight of rice, which is caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pathovar oryzae (Xoo for short), is responsible for devastating crop losses among rice farmers every year. It above all threatens the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in Asia and Africa, and accounts for malnutrition and famine in the affected regions. Although bacterial blight was not considered a major threat to rice production in Tanzania until now, in 2019 fields were detected in the Morogoro region in east Tanzania that showed in part severe damage by the ...