Scientists design rice genes to breed new varieties

Rice has a stronger flavor, like fruit, with higher iron and zinc contents, and there is no need to supplement other nutrients, everything can be achieved through molecular design of rice genes. A few days ago, the author learned from the symposium on "crop Molecular Design and Innovation" that China is building a huge bioinformatics basic platform to ensure that high-quality genes must be hit with one hit.

Zhu Ying, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that taking rice as an example, japonica rice, which tastes soft and waxy, is more popular, and people also want rice to be more fragrant or have special flavors such as "fruity". And if the content of iron, zinc and other trace elements in rice is higher, you can directly supplement the trace elements needed by the human body through meals to reduce the occurrence of anaemia. In addition to the taste, the study of yield-increasing genes that control unit yield is another important research direction, which can be used to cultivate new varieties through the molecular design of rice genes.

At present, the main problem of conventional breeding is high input and low output, which is blind and unpredictable. Breeding depends largely on experience and luck, it takes a lot of time to select hundreds of materials, and in the end, the efficiency of breeding good genes is less than 1/1000000. Molecular design is a new breeding technique put forward by agricultural breeders at home and abroad combined with biological science and technology. through the study of genes and their changes that control all important agronomic traits, excellent genes are selected for combination design and simulation evaluation, and the best gene combinations with a variety of excellent performance are obtained, and then with the help of traditional hybridization and DNA molecular marker screening techniques. Ingenious aggregation of genes from different varieties into a variety, so that it has the best gene combination, so as to form a new variety, compared with the traditional breeding technology, molecular design breeding is more accurate and more efficient.

At present, China is building a basic research platform, which will build a bridge between the huge biological information and the needs of breeders. Before conducting field experiments, breeders simulate and optimize various factors in the breeding process, and put forward the best strategies for parent selection and offspring selection, so as to greatly improve the efficiency of breeding and shorten the time of breeding. And can cultivate more diversified new varieties to meet the needs of life.