Adaptabilidade e danos potenciais de Rhizoctonia oryzae-sativae ao milho

Abstract

Rhizoctonia species are associated with rice sheath-blight complex, and R. oryzae-sativae, in particular, causes aggregate sheath spot. This study aimed to determine the adaptive potential of two populations of R. oryzae-sativae to maize, one of the cash crops widely grown in São Paulo State and that could be used in rotation with irrigated rice. There is no report of the disease on maize in Brazil. Isolates of two populations of R. oryzae-sativae were inoculated in maize plants and components of evolvability or adaptive potential of a population (i.e., estimates of response to selection) were determined, such as genotypic variance coefficients (IG), environmental variance (IE) and heritability (h2) for the disease aggressiveness levels. Phenotypic differentiation based on quantitative traits (QST) was also compared with neutral genetic differentiation (based on microsatellite data) in the two populations (FST). Similar experiments using rice plants inoculated with the two populations of the pathogen were used as controls. Isolates from R. oryzae-sativae populations were pathogenic and had varied aggressiveness in maize, and low heritalibity predominated for this trait. The estimated values of QST did not differ significantly from those of FST, indicating that neutrality played an important role in the regional adaptation of the pathogen populations.