Control of rice blast drives yield benefits from variety mixture in rice: A meta-analysis

作者：Tao Song, Chaochun Zhang, Yan Dong, Zhan Xu, Chunjie Li, David Makowski, Fusuo Zhang, Wopke van der Werf · 发表于：Field Crops Research · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.fcr.2025.110054 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Rice Cultivation and Yield Improvement、Agricultural Systems and Practices、Genetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals

Context Rice blast, caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, is the most important disease of rice globally. Variety mixture can greatly reduce the incidence of rice blast and increase yield. However, the effectiveness of variety mixture as a disease control method varies across studies, and no overarching synthesis of the available data has been made to date. Objective Here, we synthesized the available experimental data on the effect of variety mixture on rice blast and yield by quantifying the disease reduction and yield gain in mixtures of glutinous and hybrid rice cultivars in relation to nitrogen (N) fertilization and the use of fungicides. Methods We searched the global literature for field studies on disease control and yield benefits from variety mixture in rice and synthesized 1255 observations from 38 publications using meta-analysis and meta-regression. Results The disease odds were reduced by 68 % on average in variety mixtures as compared to pure stands, and the reduction was substantially greater in blast-susceptible glutinous rice varieties (80 %) than in the more blast-resistant hybrid rice varieties (34 %). Variety mixture provided a similar level of disease control in glutinous rice as the use of fungicides. Blast-resistant hybrid rice varieties became susceptible to blast at high fertilizer N input but the disease controlling effect of mixture was unaffected by fertilizer N input. The relative yield total in mixture relative to pure stands increased with d...