[2] Bacterial blight of rice has high epidemic potential and is destructive to high-yielding cultivars in both temperate and tropical regions especially in Asia.

[3] Research on bacterial blight of rice was begun in Japan as early as in 1901, and those efforts were focused mainly on ecological studies and chemical control.

X. oryzae lives on dead plants and seeds and probably moves plant-to-plant best through pattywater from irrigation or storms.

Bacteria oozes from leaf lesions and is spread by wind or rain, especially when strong storms occur and cause wounds to plants.

[6] Xanthomonas oryzae is endemic to Japan, but can also be found throughout the tropical rice producing countries of Asia.

In the tropics the pathogen has the highest level of incidence during the rainy season when rain and wind wound crops.

The use of nitrogenous fertilizer has shown an increase in incidence but mainly because there is more plant growth and conditions stay more humid,[7] but does not have an effect on lesion size.

During drier weather bacterial ooze will secrete from leaf lesions in hopes of finding a new host.

Found worldwide in temperate and tropical regions, it can destroy up to 80 percent of a crop if the disease develops early.

[10] Traditional treatments, such as the applications of copper compounds or antibiotics, are largely ineffective in the control of bacterial leaf blight.

[14] They do this by trialling Xoo isolates against rice isogenic lines with clones of avirulence genes to obtain the necessary precision.