Rice bakanae disease (RBD) caused by Fusarium
fujikuroi is a widespread and destructive disease of rice.
It is urgent to
introduce a new class of fungicide to manage the fungicidal resistance
problem and effectively control the disease. Azoxystrobin (AZO) is
an active fungicide with a broad antifungal spectrum, while its activity
against F. fujikuroi is not well
investigated. In this study, the baseline sensitivity of F. fujikuroi to AZO was established by testing the
sensitivity of 100 isolates, collected from Anhui Province of China.
The mechanism of resistance to AZO was also investigated. AZO exhibited
a strong activity against the 100 F. fujikuroi isolates with EC50 values of 0.822 ± 0.285 and 0.762
± 0.283 μg/mL for mycelial growth and conidial germination,
respectively, and both of the baseline sensitivity curves were validated
as unimodal curves. To investigate the resistance mechanism, six mutants
with resistance factor (RF) values >50 were generated from wild-type
sensitive strains through UV mutagenesis, and sequence analysis showed
that mutation G143A in cyt b conferred the resistance
to AZO. Mycelial growth, conidia production, pathogenicity, and ATP
production were decreased in all six resistant mutants as compared
to the parental strains, indicating the fitness penalties in this
phenotype of resistance mutation. In addition, the cross-resistance
assay showed that there was no cross-resistance between AZO and carbendazim,
prochloraz, phenamacril, or pydiflumetofen. AZO can be an efficient
candidate to control RBD in China with moderate to low fungal resistance
risk, but continuous resistance monitoring should be performed during
the application of this fungicide.