Abstract:
Wheat sharp eyespot, mainly caused by
Rhizoctonia cerealis, is a soil-borne fungal disease. Since the mid-1990s, it has gradually risen from a minor disease to a major one in the Huang-Huai wheat-growing region. Resistant strains of common fungicides have emerged. The inhibitory activity of newly commercialized succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors (SDHIs) against
R. cerealis has not been reported yet. In this study, three strains of
R. cerealis (ZMDBY-9, JZWZ-8, and ZMDBY-6) were selected to determine the inhibitory activity of ten SDHIs fungicides including carboxin, flutolanil, thifluzamide, boscalid, isopyrazam, fluxapyroxad, benzovindiflupyr, fluopyram, pydiflumetofen and pyraziflumid, using mycelial growth rate method. Homology modeling and molecular docking were used to investigate the binding modes between RcSDH bcd and these ten SDHIs fungicides as well as analyze the correlation between binding energy and inhibitory effect. The results obtained from the mycelial growth rate method showed that benzovindiflupyr and fluxapyroxad exhibited higher inhibition effects with mean EC
50 values less than 0.1 mg/L; while fluopyram and pydiflumetofen displayed weaker inhibitory activities with mean EC
50 values greater than 1 mg/L; for the mean EC
50 values of other six fungicides ranged from 0.1 to 0.6 mg/L. Molecular docking results indicated that among these ten SDHIs fungicides, those containing pyrazole-4-carboxamide structure possessed better inhibitory activities against
R.cerealis and had lower binding energy. There was a certain correlation between the inhibitory activities and binding energies of seven fungicides: fungicides with stronger inhibition often had lower binding energies. The research findings of this study provide references for the application of SDHI fungicides in the chemical control of wheat sharp eyespot and the compound design based on succinate dehydrogenase.