Disease Cycle
The pathogen infects as a spore that produces lesions or spots on parts of the rice plant such as the leaf, leaf collar, panicle, culm and culm nodes. Using a structure called an appressorium, the pathogen penetrates the plant. M. grisea then sporulates from the diseased rice tissue to be dispersed as conidiospores. After overwintering in sources such as rice straw and stubble, the cycle repeats.
A single cycle can be completed in about a week under favorable conditions where one lesion can generate up to thousands of spores in a single night. With the ability to continue to produce the spores for over 20 days, rice blast lesions can be devastating to susceptible rice crops.
Read more about this topic: Magnaporthe Grisea
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