Magnaporthe oryzae

Magnaporthe oryzae is the fungal species, in the family Magnaporthaceae, that causes rice blast, the most devastating fungal disease of rice, known to occur in 85 countries and estimated to destroy enough rice each year to feed more than 60 million people. It also infects other cereals, including wheat, rye, barley and pearl millet, causing related diseases such as wheat blast and rice seedling blight, and it reproduces both sexually and asexually to form specialized infection structures called appressoria. The name reflects a 2002 division of the species complex previously known as Magnaporthe grisea: members isolated from the grass Digitaria are now defined more narrowly as Magnaporthe grisea, while the rice-infecting and related lineages were renamed Magnaporthe oryzae, though some researchers still use the two names interchangeably and confusion between them persists in the scientific literature. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/