Rice blast is one of the most devastating rice diseases not only in Viet Nam but also in other countries. Using rice cultivars with stable resistance to blast is considered method of economically effective and friendly with environment. However, the blast resistance of rice cultivars lasts only several years because of frequently appearing of many blast fungus races with various pathogenic nature leading to the disease. Therefore, developing durable blast resistance cultivars is essential and important for crop protection. Pi-km gene is located on chromosome No. 11, a combination of two adjacent NBS-LRR (Nucleotide Binding Site - Leucine Rich Repeat) class genes, pikm-TS1 and pikm-TS2, confers a high and stable rice blast resistance. In this study, we determined pi-km gene by identification of presence of both pikm- TS1 and pikm-TS2 genes on cultivars at Thua Thien Hue province, Vietnam through specific PCR primers to these genes. Our results showed that the pi-km gene is present on genome of Oryza sativa cv. 4B.
