Magnaporthe oryzae, the rice blast fungus, is one of the most damaging diseases of cultivated rice in the world, posing a severe danger to rice production. Regrettably, neither traditional breeding nor chemical approaches to control it are effective. Nanotechnology has lately been explored as a potential new safer pesticide, and silica nanoparticles (SiO2 NPs) have been suggested as a potential new safer agrochemical, although systematic investigations, particularly in rice, remain scarce.
