Bacterial leaf blight (BLB) resistance and its introgression in rice varieties - Ranjit and Shraboni

The study was conducted with a views of combating bacterial leaf blight disease in two most populer susceptible rice varieties viz., Ranjit and Shraboni in Assam. The study revealed presance of xa5 gene in the varieties under reference. It was however observed that inspite of this resistant gene (xa5), the two varieities were susceptible to the disease indicating thereby that the prevalent pathotype III and xa5 alone are not sufficient to centere complete resistance ageis of the prevalent pathotype in Assam. This therefore, necessitated introgressim of a combination of BLB resistant genes, Xa13 and Xa21 along with X 95.