Too hot at night makes the rice "messy"

Too hot at night makes the rice "messy"

Too hot at night makes the rice "chaotic" Too hot at night makes the rice "chaotic"

Rising temperatures at night inhibited rice production
.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States analyzes the reason-warm nights will change the biological rhythm of rice.

"In essence, we found that warm nights can make rice's biological clock out of control
.

" said Colleen Doherty, associate professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State University, the corresponding author of the paper

Research to address the loss of rice yield is important because rice is an essential crop that feeds hundreds of millions of people every year, and climate change poses a challenge to global food security
.

Doherty said: "Until now, we don't know much about why warm nights are harmful to rice

"Most people think that plants are not dynamic, but they do
.

Plants constantly regulate their biological processes: prepare for photosynthesis before dawn and end in the evening, precisely determining how and where to'burn' their energy resources

To better understand how warm nights affect rice, Doherty collaborated with an international research team, including Krishna Jagadish of Kansas State University and Lovely Lawas of the International Rice Research Institute, to study issues in this field
.

At two research sites in the Philippines, they used different methods to control the temperature in different areas

The team led by Jagadish kept the test field at a temperature 2 degrees Celsius above the ambient temperature and took samples from the rice plants every 3 hours throughout the day
.

The control plot was not heated, but the same sampling method was used

The team led by Doherty found that when the night temperature is high, more than 1,000 genes are expressed at the "wrong" time
.

Specifically, hotter nights cause hundreds of genes, including many genes related to photosynthesis, to become active later in the day

This means that when the night is hotter than the day, the biological clock responsible for regulating all these activities will be chaotic
.

"It's not yet clear what all these genes do, but it's clear that these conflicting schedule changes are not good for plants,
" Doherty said
.

They also found that many of the affected genes are regulated by 24 transcription factors
.

Of the 24 transcription factors, 4 are considered the most promising for future research

The researchers said that they need to do more to figure out what happened, so that it is possible to start growing rice that can "resist" warmer nights
.
(Source: Wang Fang, China Science News)

Related paper information: https://doi.
org/10.
1073/pnas.
2025899118

https://doi.
org/10.
1073/pnas.
2025899118