Pan‐NLRome analysis uncovers genetic diversity and evolutionary dynamics among rice, maize and sorghum

Abstract

Plain Language Summary

Plant diseases reduce crop yields, so improving natural disease resistance is important for stable food production. Rice, maize, and sorghum rely on immune receptor genes that help plants recognize and fight pathogens. By comparing these genes across 75 genomes, we found nearly 25,000 immune receptor genes and saw that their numbers and locations vary widely within and between the three crops. Many of these immune genes were not shared by all varieties: some lines carried them, while others did not. When these genes appeared, they were often packed together in small stretches of DNA, and these stretches repeatedly matched regions that plant geneticists have already tied to disease resistance. We also found several gene clusters that are shared across rice, maize, and sorghum in those resistance regions, pointing to promising targets that breeders can prioritize and potentially translate from one crop to another.