The 2Blades Group at The Sainsbury Laboratory, working with Bayer, has received an Industrial Partnership Award (IPA) from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The three-year, £860,000 grant will support a research project led by 2Blades to develop durable resistance to soybean rust (SBR), one of the world’s most destructive crop diseases.
The three-year project, “Novel Mechanism-of-Action (NMoA) Genes: A Pathway to Durable Soybean Rust Resistance,” will accelerate the discovery of new plant immune mechanisms to protect soybean against Phakopsora pachyrhizi, the fungus that causes soybean rust (SBR). This airborne disease can wipe out up to 90% of a crop within as little as three weeks after infection, posing a major risk to food security and farm incomes.
A New Route to Durable Resistance
Current SBR control options — fungicides and conventional breeding — offer only partial protection and come with major constraints. Chemical applications are expensive and raise concerns about potential impacts on health and the environment, while the pathogen is quickly evolving reduced sensitivity to available controls. Meanwhile, known soybean resistance genes have been overcome by new pathogen races.
To tackle these limitations, 2Blades will focus on characterizing an NMoA gene pair identified in wild Glycine relatives that show immunity to SBR. When transferred into cultivated soybean, these genes could provide stronger, longer-lasting resistance to the disease.
The project aims to:
- Characterize the diversity of NMoA-related sequences across plant species;
- Identify interactions among the regulatory, signaling, and pathogen effector proteins;
- Determine how this immune response function in plant cells; and
- Explore genome editing strategies to unlock disease resistance potential from related NMoA genes in soybean.
By elucidating this new defense pathway, the research seeks to enable durable and sustainable solutions to SBR, reduce reliance on chemical treatments, and improve crop resilience worldwide, according to a press release.
The project is a collaboration between 2Blades and Bayer. Bayer will use the research outcomes to support soybean breeding efforts aimed at growers in South America, while 2Blades will work on adapting the approach for use in smallholder farming systems in Africa.
The work builds on prior joint research between the two organizations on soybean rust resistance. The BBSRC-funded project extends that collaboration by deepening the scientific understanding needed to develop soybean varieties with longer-lasting resistance to soybean rust.
