Recent advances and emerging trends in antiviral defense networking in rice

Plants and viruses coexist in the natural ecosystem for extended periods of time, interacting with each other and even coevolving, maintaining a dynamic balance between plant disease resistance and virus pathogenicity. During virus–host interactions, plants often exhibit abnormal growth and development. However, plants do not passively withstand virus attacks but have evolved sophisticated and effective defense mechanisms to resist, limit, or undermine virus infections. It is widely believed that the initial stage of infection features the most intense interactions between the virus and the host and the greatest variety of activated signal transduction pathways. This review describes the most recent findings in rice antiviral research and discusses a variety of rice antiviral molecular mechanisms, including those based on R genes and recessive resistance, RNA silencing, phytohormone signaling, autophagy and WUS-mediated antiviral immunity. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future prospects of breeding rice for enhanced virus resistance.