More than 40 grain types and yield QTL sites were identified in rice.

Rice is one of the three main grains in China, and its grain size and shape (grain type) determine the yield and appearance quality of rice.
in the past ten years, the study of the regulatory mechanism of rice granules has made great progress, and many important granule genes have been cloned and studied.
but most of the known granule genes are difficult to classify into known regulatory pathways, and the reported signal path information also presents the characteristics of fragmentation, which greatly limits the understanding of the molecular mechanism of granule regulation and restricts its application in crop high-yield high-quality molecular breeding.
recently, song Xianjun Research Group of the Institute of Plant Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with Zhuang Jieyun Research Group of the China Rice Research Institute, identified more than 40 granules and yield QTL sites in rice with the help of modern high-throughput SLAF sequencing technology.
based on this, the researchers identified and cloned a gene, TGW3, which controls grain length and yield, which encodes a kinase TGW3 similar to GSK3/SHAGGY.
studies have found that TGW3 is a negative adjustment factor of grain size, which can be reduced by increasing the size of the cell cells and reducing the number of cells, so that the shell becomes longer, the grain becomes larger and heavier;
through the rice seed mass resource sequence analysis, the researchers found two other genetic material with long-grain phenotypes, the same coding sequence as the large grain parent son of this discovery, showing the scarcity of the gene site. Further research
shows that TGW3 sites in the rice domestication process, and not by artificial selection, its large-grain alleles TGW3JZ into the main plant varieties "Huang Hua accounted for" can improve yield of more than 10%, showing that the site in rice high-yield breeding has a good utilization potential.
this study reveals the genetic composition of rice supergrain, and finds a new grain size control switch, which provides a new entry point for the further study of the molecular mechanism and genetic control network of grain type regulation, which is of great significance to the molecular breeding of high-yielding and high-quality crops.
research published in Molecular Plant.
, China Rice Research Institute associate researcher Ying Jiezheng, Plant Institute Song Xianjun group doctoral student Ma Ming and master's student Bai Wei as the paper co-first author, researcher Song Xianjun as the communication author.
the research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences" leading science and technology project of molecular module design and breeding innovation system.
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