The present invention provides a method for assessing sensitivity of a
rice blast fungus to a scytalone dehydratase inhibitor, comprising the
steps of: (a) and (b), which (a) identifies an amino acid in an amino
acid sequence of a scytalone dehydratase isolated from the rice blast
fungus, where the amino acid corresponds to valine at position 75 of SEQ
ID NO: 4; and (b) assesses the sensitivity of the rice blast fungus to
the scytalone dehydratase inhibitor, where if the amino acid identified
in step (a) is methionine, the sensitivity of the rice blast fungus to
The scytalone dehydratase inhibitor is assessed to be lower than that of
a wild-type rice blast fungus which endogenously produces the scytalone
dehydratase of SEQ ID NO: 4.