Chinese experts find High yield and good quality genes in Rice

Chinese researchers report in the new issue of Nature Genetics that they have found a gene that can improve both rice yield and quality, which can be applied to the breeding of new super hybrid rice varieties in the future.

The report said that for a long time, the main purpose of rice breeding in China is to ensure the improvement of yield, but the quality of high-yielding rice is sometimes poor. How to solve the problem of "high yield and poor quality, high quality and non-high yield" has always been a difficult problem for rice breeding.

A team led by Fu Xiangdong, researcher of Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully isolated and cloned an important gene GW7, which controls grain shape and improves rice quality, from high-quality rice male sterile line "Taifeng A".

Rice male sterile line refers to the special rice with abnormal development of male organs and pollen sterility. However, the female organs of this kind of rice flower develop normally and can be fertilized by normal pollen and produce seeds, so it is convenient to cultivate a large number of rice hybrid varieties. The GW7 gene discovered by Chinese researchers can change the cell division pattern, make rice more slender, effectively reduce chalkiness rate and chalkiness area, and thus improve the appearance and taste quality of rice. Chalkiness is the opaque part of rice endosperm, in which starch accumulation in endosperm cells is insufficient. The rice with high chalkiness is fluffy and hollow after cooking, which seriously affects the quality.

Fu Xiangdong told reporters that combined with previous research results, the combination of excellent allelic variation of related genes in Chinese high-yield indica rice can significantly improve rice quality and yield.

According to the report, the cloning of GW7 gene not only provides a new gene with important application value for high yield and high quality molecular breeding of rice, but also provides a new clue to reveal the molecular mystery of synergistic genetic improvement of rice quality and yield.

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