Soybean rust, an airborne fungal disease, can destroy up to 90% of a soybean harvest within three weeks of infection. This project aims to characterise a newly discovered immune response from a wild legume that, when transferred into soybean, confers strong resistance to the disease. Both chemical treatments and conventional breeding are losing effectiveness against the rapidly adapting fungus, and growers urgently need new, durable sources of protection. The research will identify the genes and protein interactions behind this novel mechanism-of-action (NMoA), determine how it triggers plant defences, and test whether the equivalent gene in soybean can be edited to become functional. If successful, the work will allow Bayer to develop resistant soybean varieties for commercial agriculture in South America, and the non-profit 2Blades to create varieties for smallholder farmers in Africa. This could stabilise soybean supply chains—critical for animal feed, cooking oil, and processed foods—without increasing reliance on expensive or environmentally harmful fungicides.
View original technical description
Implementing the latest knowledge of plant science is critical for achieving resilient crops in the face of increasing food system challenges, such as growing populations, changing climates, and for decreasing inputs of land, water, and chemicals leading to better sustainability. Among the most significant threats to our food supply are losses due to crop diseases, weeds, and pests. Crop diseases and related threats are a widespread and underrecognised cause of food loss that is worsening. One of the most damaging crop diseases for which durable resistance is a high priority is Soybean Rust (SBR). Caused by an airborne fungus, Phakopsora pachyrhizi, SBR is a global, fast-moving disease that can destroy up to 90% of a soybean harvest within just 3 weeks of infection. Conventional methods for combating SBR, such as crop protection chemicals and conventional breeding, have provided some defense but come with significant drawbacks. Chemical treatments are expensive and raise concerns about their potential impacts on human health and the environment. Moreover, the target pathogen (P. pachyrhizi) is quickly adapting and building tolerance to these chemical controls. Conventional breeding efforts are also limited. Though soybean has several resistance genes that have been used in breeding efforts, P. pachyrhizi races have defeated them. With both chemical and conventional breeding interventions losing efficacy against SBR, new sources of resistance are in high demand by growers and seed companies globally. This proposal seeks to advance a recently discovered novel mechanism-of-action (NMoA) that has the potential to contribute to long-lasting, durable protection against SBR for both commercial agriculture and smallholder farmers. The NMoA originates from a locus identified in the wild legume Glycine spp., which exhibits strong resistance to P. pachyrhizi. When transferred into soybean (G. max), it confers robust resistance to SBR in the crop. The main aim of this research is to fully characterize and implement this newly discovered immune response by assessing the breadth and diversity of related sequences across plant species, identifying the interactions between regulatory, signalling, and pathogen effector proteins, elucidating its site of action and impacts on plant defense responses, and lastly determining whether the homologue in soybean can be edited to become functional. NMoAs are highly valuable on their own and in combination with other more common defense responses to create long-lasting, effective resistance. Disease resistance genes from crop relatives have proved to be an effective path to expanding resistance gene diversity. Discovering and characterising a diversity of disease resistance mechanisms-of-action is critical to safeguarding our crop agriculture in the face of global pressures. Data from this study will enable Bayer, a program partner and collaborator, to advance new soybean varieties with durable resistance against this critical disease for commercial agriculture in South America, and for 2Blades to similarly advance new soybean varieties with durable resistance for smallholder deployment in Africa.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know