From Green Super Rice to green agriculture: Reaping the promise of functional genomics research

Abstract

Producing sufficient food with finite resources to feed the growing global population while having a smaller impact on the environment has always been a great challenge. Here, we review the concept and practices of Green Super Rice (GSR) that have led to a paradigm shift in goals for crop genetic improvement and models of food production for promoting sustainable agriculture. The momentous achievements and global deliveries of GSR have been fueled by the integration of abundant genetic resources, functional gene discoveries, and innovative breeding techniques with precise gene and whole-genome selection and efficient agronomic management to promote resource-saving, environmentally friendly crop production systems. We also provide perspectives on new horizons in genomic breeding technologies geared toward delivering green and nutritious crop varieties to further enhance the development of green agriculture and better nourish the world population.

Candidate Genes and Pathways in Rice Co-Responding to Drought and Salt Identified by gcHap Network

“…Further, we sort out drought and salt tolerant varieties, many of which are in Green Super Rice (GSR), especially in the famous HHZ ILs. HHZ was improved by GSR, and in addition to HHZ, GSR also improved 66 rice varieties with various combinations of beneficial agronomic characteristics in China [ 111 , 112 ].…”

The era of cultivating smart rice with high light efficiency and heat tolerance has come of age

“…Moreover, GS has successfully realized the identification and selection of many small effect genes, which is more conducive to the improvement of complex traits (Newell and Jannink, 2014). Finally, compared with the traditional MAS method, GS is more effective in improving traits with low heritability and difficult to measure (Yu et al, 2022). It can be seen that if GS can be applied to improve heat tolerance of rice, it will reduce or even get rid of the phenotypic identification, improve the accuracy of selection, further improve the breeding efficiency, and have a broad application prospect.…”

“…This shows that, in addition to improve the photosynthetic efficiency of plants, it is also of great significance to ensure that plants can maintain a normal yield balance under the coming extreme high temperature. With the advent of post functional genomics in rice, breeding strategies that utilize beneficial alleles and eliminate deleterious alleles to optimize crop genome have broad prospects for designing future crops (Varshney et al, 2021;Yu et al, 2022), and the era of breeding smart rice with high light efficiency and heat resistance has come of age.…”

Nitrate signaling and use efficiency in crops

“…Great progress has also been made in the last few years in identifying important regulators of crop NO 3 – signaling, although this work has not been reviewed to date. In addition, scientists have discovered some critical factors that contribute to crop NUE, and several excellent review papers have recently summarized these findings ( Xu et al., 2012 ; Han et al., 2015 ; Li et al., 2017 ; Wang et al., 2018b , 2020b ; Yu et al., 2022 ). However, no recent reviews have focused on the functions of NO 3 – signaling regulators in the NUE of crops.…”