Chinese scientists find a rice variant could increase yield by 15%

one of the most important food crops on the earth, rice production is directly related to the food and clothing of nearly half of the earth's population, and increasing rice production has been the lifelong pursuit of many agricultural scientists.
, Chinese scientists found that the spike development gene (FRIZZY PANICLE, FZP) in rice mutated in nature, which can significantly increase the number of grains per spike and slightly reduce the grain weight per grain, resulting in a 15% increase in rice yield.
00:00 BST on October 31st, the above-mentioned research papers were published online in the international academic journal nature
s sub-journal, nature plants. The study was conducted by a research team from Yu Yongzhong, a professor at the School of Life Sciences and Technology at Central China Agricultural University.
Yongzhong said in an interview with The News, rice's spike development gene (FRIZZY PANICLE, FZP) has the effect of preventing bud-growing tissue from forming and establishing flower-seeding tissue, and the yield of rice is closely related to it.
Yongzhong said that FZP is a very important developmental gene, its coding protein can not be changed, if the change of rice can not be planted. However, rice yield can be controlled by controlling the amount of FZP expressed. The function of FZP is strong, the rice particles become bigger, the number of particles becomes smaller, FZP function is weak, the rice particles become smaller, the number of particles becomes more.
Yongzhong said that the number of grains per spike, the number of spikes and the weight of thousands of grains determine the yield of rice per acre, but increasing the number of grains per spike is the most effective way to increase yield. The expression change of FZP regulates the change of grain number and thousand grain weight at the same time, how to optimize the expression of FZP so as to optimize the relationship between the two, so as to maximize rice yield, which needs further study.
Yongzhong's research team used groups built by the granular differences of the pro-Kawakawa 7 and Haumoboka to map-based cloning (also known as positioning cloning), at the FZP upstream 5.3kb of the pro-Kawakawa 7, A transcription of an 18bp fragment was found to have been copied, resulting in a copy number variation (Copy number variation, CNV-18bp), which resulted in two 18bp fragments in series in the pro-Trump 7.
number of copies refers to the number of genes in the genome of a living organism, and a single copy means that there is only one gene in the genome of the organism, and more than one gene. Copy number variation (Copy number variation, CNV) is caused by genome rearration, which generally means that the number of copies of large fragments of genomes longer than 1kb increases or decreases.
further studies have found that transcription inhibitors OsBZR1 combine with the CGTG gene sequence in CNV-18bp to inhibit the expression of FZP. This FZP expression of two 18bp fragments is lower than that of a single copy, resulting in longer branching times, more seeds and slightly smaller seeds. The team found a significant reduction of about 10% in rice grains with two 18bp fragments, a 40%-50% increase in the number of grains per spike, with no significant difference in spikes, but a 15% increase in rice yields compared to only one 18bp fragment.
fact, the vast majority of rice only one 18bp fragment, Yu Yongzhong team tested more than 500 materials found that only a few varieties in India, Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian regions have two series of 18bp fragments. This is a mutation in nature, says Mr Yu. Therefore, molecular markers can be used to assist breeding, so that the excellent alleged gene in China's high-product species improvement plays a huge role.
Yu Yongzhong is confident that his team is using the excellent allegiance gene to improve the backbone of Chinese rice. (Source: Wang Can)