Rice cultivars undergoing a susceptible and resistant interaction with the parasitic plant Striga hermonthica

Using rice cultivars Nipponbare, which exhibits resistance to Striga hermonthica (a root parasitic plant that causes devastating loss of yield), and IAC165, which is susceptible, we aim to identify suites of genes underlying susceptibility and resistance to S. hermonthica by profiling changes in gene expression using rice whole genome microarrays. In addition to a functional categorisation of changes in gene expression, genes that were significantly differentially regulated within regions predicted to contain Nipponbare quantitative trait loci for resistance were identified. Keywords: Infected material vs. comparable control tissue, time course Root tissue was harvested from two cultivars of rice that had been infected with Striga hermonthica (or from uninfected control tissue). Three timepoints were used (2, 4 and 11 days after infection or mock-inoculation) using two replicate chips per treatment/timepoint.