Rice is the staple food of half of the world's population. Disease damage to rice can greatly reduce the yield, and planting a resistant rice variety is the simplest and most cost effective management for diseases. A new study has revealed that gene transfer from a completely different plant species can significantly boost the built-in immunity of rice plants which may help increase the health and productivity of rice.

Lead author Benjamin Schwessinger, post-doctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, said, "Our results demonstrate that disease resistance in rice and possibly related crop species, could very likely be enhanced by transferring genes responsible for specific immune receptors from dicotyledonous plants into rice, which is a monocotyledonous crop."

Receptors are specialized proteins that can recognize molecular patterns associated with disease-causing microbes, including bacteria and fungi, at the beginning of an infection. These receptors are found on the surface of plant cells, and they play a key role in the plant's early warning system. Some of these receptors, however, occur only in certain groups of plant species.