Rice Tungro Disease is considered as rice cancer as it causes symptoms, such
as stunted growth, yellow to orange leaf discoloration, and fewer
reproductive tillers that are difficult to control once manifested in rice
plants. The RF2a gene was found to increase tolerance of rice plants to
tungro virus.


Researchers from Indonesian Institute of Sciences transferred and
overexpressed the gene in rice cultivar IR64 via Agrobacterium mediated
transformation using the pCAMBIA vector. We reported the overexpression of
RF2a in transgenic rice plants cultivar IR64. Results showed better
tolerance of the transgenic rice lines compared with non-transgenic IR64,
with comparable tolerance levels tungro virus-tolerant rice cultivar Tukad
Petanu. They also confirmed the role of the gene in the tolerance mechanism
via qRT PCR and found increased levels of the gene in tolerant rice plants
and low expression in the non-tolerant ones.



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