A major goal of rice breeding and pathology programmes in the southern United States is to improve disease resistance, especially to sheath blight (Groth and Bond, 2007).
Rice cultivars with disease resistance would reduce or eliminate losses due to disease without the use of fungicides.
Other benefits of disease-resistant cultivars include reduced disease development and subsequent inoculum production and increased grain and milling yields, a key component in grain quality and price (Groth et al., 1993).