COLDSKY.CN – Professor Chen Xuewei, winner of Xplore Prize in 2019 and from Sichuan Agricultural University has developed a new approach to tackle blast that can happen in all growth stages of rice and can cause significant crop loss.
Chen studied Digu, a rice variety carrying durable, high-level resistance, and tried to find the broad- spectrum resistance genes that help rice to survive arguably the most devastating fungal disease of rice.
A Cell paper in 2017, he co-authored, identified the bsr-d1 Allele as associated with Digu blast resistance. In 2019, his team published another breakthrough on Nature, identifying a gene that improves both yield and disease resistance in rice.
In this interview(in Chinese, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BZy7IVsBet1ItcoG69BtCw), Chen said he is also interested in studying how to improve soil rehabilitation amid the increasing use of chemical fertilizers and decreasing productivity .
