Rice blast caused by Magnaporthe grisea is the major damaging disease in nearly all rice growing nations. Economically relevance with 60 percent of total population of world depending on rice as the main source of calories, may have destructive effects of the disease, however, this pathogen has developed into a pioneering model system for researching host-pathogen interactions. The disease outbreak depends on the weather and climatic conditions of the various regions. The disease's occurrence and symptoms vary from country to country. Susceptible cultivars cause huge rice production loss in yield. The principal cause of resistance breakdown in rice against rice blast disease is pathogenic variability. During sexual hybridization, pathogenic changes may provide evidence of pathogenic variation found at the asexual stage of the fungus. The virulent pathotypes cause severe disease incidence. Only through pathogenicity research the pathotypes can be determined using a collection of different rice varieties that are usually different carrying various resistance genes. Rice breeders now have a number of resistant genes however, most of the breeding programs emphasized upon monogenic resistance. Genetic heterogeneity of M. grisea should be taken into account when screening blast resistant rice genotypes through morphological analysis, pathogenicity and molecular characterization. Knowledge on the virulence of the rice blast and host resistant is essential for managing the disease. Cultivation of resistant varieties with chemical control is highly effective against blast pathogens.

The fungal species belonging to the genus Trichoderma has been globally recognized as a potential candidate of biofertilizer and biocontrol agent to prevent devastating soil-borne fungal pathogens and enhance growth and productivity of agricultural crops. The antagonistic activity of Trichoderma to pathogenic fungi is attributed to several mechanisms including antibiosis and enzymatic hydrolysis, which are largely associated with a wide range of metabolites secreted by the Trichoderma species. Besides suppressing target pathogens, several metabolites produced by Trichoderma species may act against non-pathogenic beneficial soil microbial communities and perform unintended alterations within the structures and functions of microbial communities in the crop rhizosphere. Multiple microbial interactions have been shown to enhance biocontrol efficacy in many cases as compared to bioinoculant employed alone. The key advances in understanding the ecological functions of the Trichoderma species with special emphasis on their associations with plant roots and other microbes exist in the crop rhizosphere, which are briefly described here. This review focuses on the interactions of metabolites secreted by Trichoderma species and plant roots in the rhizosphere and their impacts on pathogenic and non-pathogenic soil microbial communities. The complex interactions among Trichoderma–plants–microbes that may occur in the crop rhizosphere are underlined and several prospective avenues for future research in this area are briefly explored. The data presented here will stipulate future research on sustainably maximizing the efficiency of Trichoderma inoculation and their secondary metabolites in the crop soil ecosystem.

Protecting food crops from viral pathogens is a significant challenge for agriculture. An integral approach to genome-editing, known as CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and CRISPR associated protein 9), is used to produce virus-resistant cultivars. The CRISPR/Cas9 tool is an essential part of modern plant breeding due to its attractive features. Advances in plant breeding programs due to the incorporation of Cas9 have enabled the development of cultivars with heritable resistance to plant viruses. The resistance to viral DNA and RNA is generally provided using the Cas9 endonuclease and sgRNAs (single-guide RNAs) complex, targeting particular virus and host plant genomes by interrupting the viral cleavage or altering the plant host genome, thus reducing the replication ability of the virus. In this review, the CRISPR/Cas9 system and its application to staple food crops resistance against several destructive plant viruses are briefly described. We outline the key findings of recent Cas9 applications, including enhanced virus resistance, genetic mechanisms, research strategies, and challenges in economically important and globally cultivated food crop species. The research outcome of this emerging molecular technology can extend the development of agriculture and food security. We also describe the information gaps and address the unanswered concerns relating to plant viral resistance mediated by CRISPR/Cas9.

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is a popular nutritious vegetable crop grown in Malaysia and other parts of the world. However, fungal diseases such as anthracnose pose significant threats to tomato production by reducing the fruit quality and food value of tomato, resulting in lower market prices of the crop globally. In the present study, the etiology of tomato anthracnose was investigated in commercial tomato farms in Sabah, Malaysia. A total of 22 fungal isolates were obtained from anthracnosed tomato fruits and identified as Colletotrichum species, using morphological characteristics. The phylogenetic relationships of multiple gene sequence alignments such as internal transcribed spacer (ITS), β-tubulin (tub2), glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (gapdh), actin (act), and calmodulin (cal), were adopted to accurately identify the Colletotrichum species as C. truncatum. The results of pathogenicity tests revealed that all C. truncatum isolates caused anthracnose disease symptoms on inoculated tomato fruits. To our knowledge, the present study is the first report of tomato anthracnose caused by C. truncatum in Malaysia. The findings of this study will be helpful in disease monitoring, and the development of strategies for effective control of anthracnose on tomato fruits.

A field experiment was conducted at the Agronomy research field of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh during the period from November 2015 to June 2016 to observe the effect of sowing dates on yield and quality of chickpea. The study aimed at finding out yield and quality response of two varieties of chickpea (BARI Chola-5 and BARI Chola-9), at five different sowing dates viz. November 05, November 20, December 05, December 20 and January 04. The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design with three replications. The results of two varieties revealed significant variations in days to flowering, maturity, number of grains per plant, number of seeds per grain, the weight of 1000 seeds, grain yield, stover yield, biological yield and harvest index due to different sowing dates. Early and delayed sowings affected the chickpea yield and the quality of grain. Physiological responses of chickpea were also greatly influenced by different sowing dates that affect the proper growth and development of chickpea plants. In case of varieties, significant variation was observed in all parameters, here, BARI Chola-9 showed better performance than BARI Chola-5. BARI Chola-9 sown on November 20 produced maximum grain yield (2.40 t/ha) and the lowest grain yield (1.23 t/ha) was found in BARI Chola-5 sown on January 04. Irrespective of variety, early and delayed sowings showed lower performance on all parameters, significantly affected the yield and quality of chickpea.

Sixteen advance genotypes of mungbeans under 5 different concentrations of Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) were studied to find out the better cultivar against drought stress condition. The experiment results revealed that germination, seedling production and water-related behavior of mungbean genotypes differed significantly under different PEG (drought inducer) concentrations. The mungbean genotype BINA Mung-6 (V₈) is proved as highly tolerant against drought stress condition among all other tested genotypes. The results of the investigation revealed that BINA Mung-6 (V₈) genotype consistently scored the highest value for all parameters except for the root shoot ratio and water retention capacity that was statistically comparable to genotypes BARI Mung-4 (V₂) and BINA Mung-5 (V₇). Consistently poor performance were recorded from IPM-02-03 (V₁₆) genotype which is statistically similar as genotypes BMXK1-09015-2 (V₁₃) and BMXK1-09015-6 (V₁₀). The maximum percentage of germination (98.12%), shoot length (139.40 mm), root length (99.07 mm), shoot dry weight (22.32 mg), root dry weight (6.88 mg), relative water content (94.78), water retention capacity (24.98), germination co-efficient (22.27) and vigor index (233.90) were reported from BINA Mung-6 (V₈) at a concentration of 0 percent PEG. The minimum percentage of germination (28.22 percent), shoot length (31.17 mm), root length (16.50 mm), shoot dry weight (2.21 mg), root dry weight (0.97 mg), relative water content (25.55), water retention capacity (3.08), germination co-efficient (6.06) and vigor index (13.45) were reported from IPM-02-03 (V₁₆) mungbean advance lines at 0 percent PEG. Maximum (0.92) root shoot ratio was recorded from both BARI Mung-8 (V₆) and BMX-08011-2 (V₁₁) mungbean genotypes at 20 percent PEG concentration and minimum (0.22) at 0 percent PEG concentration from BARI Mung-5 (V₃) genotype. Maximum water retention capacity (74.45) was recorded at 20 per cent PEG concentration from IPM-02-03 (V₁₆) genotype and minimum (5.22) was at 0 per cent PEG concentration from BINA Mung-6 (V₈) genotype.