Mechanisms Underlying Durable Disease Resistance in the Yuanyang Rice Terraces

SemIDEEV
 28/08/2026
 12:00:00
 Huichan Huang - Yunnan Agricultural University - Chine
 IDEEV - Salle Rosalind Franklin

The Honghe Hani rice terraces of Yuanyang, Yunnan, are a UNESCO World Heritage site with over 1,300 years of continuous cultivation. There, more than 200 traditional rice varieties are grown in mixtures right beside the centre of diversity of the rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae), yet disease levels have remained low over the long term without any fungicide application. The talk accounts for that outcome through four mutually corroborating lines of evidence: effector–immunity interactions between the indica and japonica compartments build an immune barrier at the landscape scale; the landraces retain genetic diversity on a global scale, further enriched and maintained by balancing selection in immunity-related regions; the coexistence of five rice blast lineages constrains the risk of specialisation-driven epidemics; and farmer seed-exchange networks allow this configuration to persist over time.