Vol. 13, Issue 3 (2024)

Rice is a major cereal crop that contributes significantly to global food security and highly vulnerable to rice blast disease. Rice blast disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae is one of the most destructive disease causing huge losses to rice yield in different parts of the world. The rapid genetic evolution of the fungus often overcomes the resistance after a few years of intensive agricultural use. Development of resistant cultivars is the most economic and effective strategy to control the disease. Therefore, an attempt has been made to identify resistant genotypes by screening a set of 355 rice germplasm accessions during kharif 2021 under Uniform Blast Nursery (UBN) using 0-9 scale SES, IRRI, Philippines. It was observed that the rice germplasm accessions showed variable responses against the rice blast pathogen and among the tested genotypes, out of 355 rice genotypes, thirty-two (32) genotypes were highly resistant with a score of 0 and 1, Twenty-one (21) genotypes were resistant with a score of 2, fifty-five (55) genotypes were moderately resistant with a score of 3, Three (3) genotypes were moderately susceptible with a score of 4, one hundred and one (101) genotypes were intermediate with a score of 5 and 6, thirty-nine (39) genotypes were susceptible and one hundred and twenty-nine (129) genotypes were highly susceptible. The information revealed from this study could be helpful for rice leaf blast disease management and the identified resistant rice genotypes could be used as prospective donors for the production of resistant varieties in various resistance breeding programs.