A pigeonpea gene confers resistance to Asian soybean rust in soybean.

Authors: Kawashima, Cintia G and Guimarães, Gustavo Augusto and Nogueira, Sônia Regina and MacLean, Dan and Cook, Doug R and Steuernagel, Burkhard and Baek, Jongmin and Bouyioukos, Costas and Melo, Bernardo do V A and Tristão, Gustavo and de Oliveira, Jamile Camargos and Rauscher, Gilda and Mittal, Shipra and Panichelli, Lisa and Bacot, Karen and Johnson, Ebony and Iyer, Geeta and Tabor, Girma and Wulff, Brande B H and Ward, Eric and Rairdan, Gregory J and Broglie, Karen E and Wu, Gusui and van Esse, H Peter and Jones, Jonathan D G and Brommonschenkel, Sérgio H

Asian soybean rust (ASR), caused by the fungus Phakopsora pachyrhizi, is one of the most economically important crop diseases, but is only treatable with fungicides, which are becoming less effective owing to the emergence of fungicide resistance. There are no commercial soybean cultivars with durable resistance to P. pachyrhizi, and although soybean resistance loci have been mapped, no resistance genes have been cloned. We report the cloning of a P. pachyrhizi resistance gene CcRpp1 (Cajanus cajan Resistance against Phakopsora pachyrhizi 1) from pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) and show that CcRpp1 confers full resistance to P. pachyrhizi in soybean. Our findings show that legume species related to soybean such as pigeonpea, cowpea, common bean and others could provide a valuable and diverse pool of resistance traits for crop improvement.

Journal: Nature biotechnology
DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3554
Year: 2016

Read publication