Key Genes Make Rice "How Fast and Good"

can be precocious and high yield is one of the main directions of rice breeding research. The Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with Sichuan Agricultural University and other units, has found a key gene in rice, which combines the advantages of precociousness and high yield, and has the remarkable characteristics of efficient use of resources. The paper was published online August 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Earlier, Deng Xiaojian, a researcher at Sichuan Agricultural University, and others initially identified the existence of a explicit precocious gene Ef-cd in the short arm of the third chromosome of rice, and then cloned the gene over the years through collaboration with the research team of the Institute of Genetic Development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The gene is a long fragment of non-coding RNA that positively regulates the expression of an important flowering gene, which causes rice to mature prematurely.
Researchers in Beijing, Chengdu, Sichuan, Zhejiang Jiaxing, Fuzhou, Fujian and other different latitudes carried out field comparative tests, found that the gene will be rice spike period 7 to 20 days ahead of time, without leading to reduced production, even in many regions have different degrees of increase in yield effect.
large-scale histological analysis showed that the nitrogen metabolism, chlorophysics metabolism and photodeteose-related gene expression in rice containing this gene were significantly enhanced, and physiological experiments also proved that the gene significantly improved the absorption capacity of nitrous nitrogen and ammonium nitrogen in rice and the photochromic efficiency of leaves, with significant characteristics of efficient use of resources.
Subsequently, the researchers, in collaboration with Han Bin, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, analyzed the genotypes of the 1439 hybrid rice varieties currently used in China's production and their field spike period, and found that all hybrid rice combinations containing this gene were on average 9 to 10 days ahead of schedule in Hangzhou and Sanya.
"this shows that this gene has made a great contribution to the production of hybrid rice in China, is a gene of great value. "Storage Chengcai believes that if the gene is excavated and used, it will strongly promote the weight loss and efficiency of the cultivation of green super rice varieties, and at the same time, it is of great value to solve the problems of live rice and grain, grain and vegetables, grain and oil rice precocious yield and interseed hybrid rice "super-relative late ripe".
it is understood that in the early stage of the development of hybrid rice in China, the phenomenon of "high yield is not precocious, precocious is not high yield" is a major problem in variety cultivation. In this regard, Chinese Academy of Engineering academician Yuan Longping and Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Xie Hua'an led the team to become two precocious restoration departments. Since then, China has used two backbone recovery systems to form a large number of precocious high-yield combinations and applied to production, successfully overcome the hybrid rice "excellent but not early, early and not excellent" technical difficulties, to achieve hybrid rice in china's southern two-season rice region widely used. However, the molecular physiological mechanism of rice precocious and high yield has not been revealed. (Source: Ding Jia, China Science Journal)
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