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Making matters worse, rice blast, a fungal disease that normally arrives later in the season, had made an early appearance.

There is no reason to think that the Sichuan scientists’ discovery — a gene that confers resistance to the fungal disease rice blast — won’t stand up to the scrutiny of post-publication peer review.

For instance, rice blast disease, which the plants effectively combatted, causes an estimated 30% loss of the annual rice crop worldwide.

The rice blast fungus, present in scores of countries, has migrated to wheat, and has become a scourge of farmers in Brazil.

He said that his own field of specialty, the study of the destructive rice blast fungus, had been revolutionized as a result of having the genome sequence.