Rice Breeding: A Long Noncoding Locus with Great Potential

Abstract

Rice is one of the most widely consumed cereal crops and staple food for more than half of the world's population, especially in Asian countries (Li and Cui, 2014). The growth period of rice is an important agronomic trait, which determines the planting regions or adaptabilities of rice varieties. In breeding practice, there is often a contradiction between high yield and early maturity (Wang et al., 2018a), meaning that a variety with higher yield usually has a longer growth period. Thus, breeding varieties with early maturity and high yield has been one of the main directions of genetic breeding programs.

Whole-genome analysis of recombinant inbred rice lines reveals a quantitative trait locus on chromosome 3 with genotype-by-environment interaction effects

“…Phenotypes related to plant growth and heading date are normally correlated because a long growth period leads to higher yields ( Wang et al . 2018 ; Yu and Qian 2019 ). However, the Ef-cd locus causes a shortened maturation period with no yield penalty ( Fang et al .…”

Mitigating tradeoffs in plant breeding

“…Ef-cd encodes a long noncoding RNA (IncRNA) that is transcribed from the antisense strand of OsSOC1 , which encodes a flowering activator in rice. Ef-cd positively regulates the expression of OsSOC1 by affecting the chromatin modifications around OsSOC1 locus, thus leading to the early maturity phenotype ( Yu and Qian, 2019 ). Natural variation in Ef-cd locus were recently discovered and deployed to overcome this negative tradeoff.…”

“…(2020) C:N partitioning QQS Transgenic soybean containing QQS enhanced seed protein by 18% and reduced oil by 13% with no adverse impact on plant growth, seed yield, seed morphology or seed weight Li and Wurtele (2015) QQS Enhanced protein in transgenic maize, rice, and soybean containing QQS independent of genetic background and original protein content Li et al. (2015) Earliness versus yield Ef-cd A major gene regulating maturity duration in rice ( Yu and Qian, 2019 ); deployment of allelic variation in Ef-cd locus resulted in 7–20 days early maturity in NILs and derived early maturing hybrids across latitudes without penalty on yield Fang et al. (2019) Seed number versus weight GNI-A1 Regulates floret fertility and seed weight; a rare allele from ‘Zavitan’ (wild emmer) and 1B allele from ‘Weebill’ (bread wheat) associated with seed weight, independent of seed number, attractive targets to minimize seed weight and number tradeoff in wheat Golan et al.…”

Exploitation of Drought Tolerance-Related Genes for Crop Improvement

“…Molecular design breeding, a highly integrated system based on biotechnology and bioinformatics [ 146 ], may be an effective approach to enhance drought tolerance [ 147 ]. It can design and manipulate genotypes to meet various breeding objectives in different ecological regions under diverse water conditions [ 148 ]. Based on the principle of molecular design breeding, the ideal genotypes can be identified during crossing, selection and transgene and genome editing.…”