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The land–sea thermal contrast is an important driver for monsoon interannual variability and the monsoon onset. The thermal contrast between the Tibetan Plateau and the tropical Indian Ocean at the mid–upper troposphere is proposed as a thermal contrast index (TCI) for South Asian monsoon. The authors investigate the TCI associated with South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) intensity and SASM onset. It is observed that the TCI considering the Tibetan Plateau and tropical Indian Ocean demonstrates a stronger and closer correlation with SASM intensity (0.87) than either the Tibetan Plateau (0.42) or tropical Indian Ocean (−0.60) singly. It is implied that the TCI could preferably represent the impact of land–sea thermal condition on SASM activity. Further analysis reveals that the evolution of TCI is related to the SASM onset. The TCI is almost always larger in early onset years than it is in late onset years during the period before SASM onset. In addition, the change of the pentad-by-pentad increment of TCI leads the SASM variation. The correlation coefficient between the TCI increment and SASM index reaches a maximum when the TCI increment leads by 15 pentads. The results of this study show that the TCI plays an important role in SASM activities and is a potential indicator for SASM onset forecasting.

Plant innate immunity relies on successful detection of trespassing pathogens through recognizing their microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) at the cell surface. We recently reported two rice lysin motif (LysM)-containing proteins, OsLYP4 and OsLYP6, as dual functional PRRs sensing bacterial peptidoglycan (PGN) and fungal chitin. Here we further demonstrated the important roles of OsLYP4 and OsLYP6 in rice defense signaling, as silencing of either LYPimpaired the defense marker gene activation induced by either bacterial pathogen Xanthomonas oryzaecolaor fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae. Moreover, we found that OsLYP4 and OsLYP6 could form homo- and hetero-dimers, and could interact with CEBiP, suggesting an unexpected complexity of chitin perception in rice.