Reasonable utilization of natural resource and protection of ecological environment is the foundation for implementing agricultural sustainable development. Biodiversity research and protection are becoming an important issue concerned commonly in the world. Crop disease is one of the important natural disasters for food production and safety, and is also one of the main reasons that confine sustainable development of agricultural production. Large-scale deployment of single highly resistant variety results in reduction of agro-biodiversity level. In this case, excessive loss of agro-biodiversity has become the main challenge in sustainable agriculture. Biodiversity can not only effectively alleviate disease incidence and loss of crop production, but also reduce pollution of agricultural ecological environment caused by excessive application of pesticides and fertilizers to the agricultural ecological environment. Discovery of the mechanism of biodiversity to control crop diseases can reasonably guide the rational deployment and rotation of different crops and establish optimization combinations of different crops. This review summarizes recent advances of research on molecular, physiological, and ecological mechanisms of biodiversity managing crop diseases, and proposes some research that needs to be strengthened in the future.

Background: Rice blast is a very serious disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae. The avirulence (AVR) genes of rice blast are perceived by the corresponding rice-blast resistance (R) genes and prompt specific resistance. A mutantion in AVR is a major force for new virulence. Exploring mutations in AVR among M. oryzae isolates from rice-production fields could aid assessment of the efficacy and durability of R genes. We studied the probable molecular-evolutionary patterns of AVR-Pib alleles by assaying their DNA-sequence diversification and examining their avirulence to the corresponding Pib resistance gene under natural conditions in China.Results: PCRs detected results from M. oryzae genomic DNA revealed that 162 out of 366 isolates collected from Yunnan Province contained AVR-Pib alleles. Among them, 36.1–73.3% isolates from six different rice-production areas of Yunnan contained AVR-Pib alleles. Furthermore, 36 (28.6%) out of 126 isolates had a transposable element (TE) insertion in AVR-Pib, which resulted in altered virulence. The TE insertion was identified in isolates from rice rather than from Musa nana Lour. Twelve AVR-Pib haplotypes encoding three novel AVR-Pib variants were identified among the remaining 90 isolates. AVR-Pib alleles evolved to virulent forms from avirulent forms by base substitution and TE insertion of Pot2 and Pot3 in the 5′ untranslated region of AVR-Pib. Conclusions: Our results revealed that AVR-Pib alleles suffered neutral evolution and divergences that led to overcome specific resistant Pib alleles under field conditions. The TE insertion in AVR-Pib was selected and adapted to rice and other Gramineae species.

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Rice blast is caused by Magnaporthe oryzae (M. oryzae), which is considered one of the most serious pathogens of rice around the globe. It causes severe losses owing to its proven capability to disrupt the host resistance. Recently, its invasion of new hosts like the Musa species or banana plants has been noticed. To understand the possible level of genetic variation, we sequenced the genomes of eight different isolates of the Magnaporthe species infecting rice, Digitaria (a weed), finger millet, Elusine indica, and banana plants. Comparative genomic analysis of these eight isolates with the previously well-characterized laboratory strain M. oryzae 70-15 was made. The infectivity of the newly isolated strain from Musa species suggested that there is no resistance level in the host plants. The sequence analysis revealed that despite genome similarities, both the banana and Digitaria isolates have relatively larger genome sizes (∼38.2 and 51.1 Mb, respectively) compared to those of the laboratory reference strain M. oryzae 70-15 (∼37 Mb). The gene contraction, expansion, and InDel analysis revealed that during evolution, a higher number of gene insertions and deletions occurred in the blast fungus infecting Digitaria and banana. Furthermore, each genome shared thousands of genes, which suggest their common evolution. Overall, our analysis indicates that higher levels of genes insertion or deletions and gain in the total genome size are important factors in disrupting the host immunity and change in host selection.

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