The research organized by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and of Sciences discovered that the variation of rice chromosomal copy number could control the length and quality of rice. It laid a foundation for the breeding of new prolific rice. This result has been published on Nature Genetics which is an internationally famous academic journal.

With the opening of rice market, consumers not only required the delicious taste, but also nice appearance, so improving the appearance and commodity value of rice became the common aim of breeders and rice production enterprises. The grain shape of rice included short cone and long grain shape. It was the main index to measure the formal quality of rice. At the same time, it was an important factor to influence agronomic traits of rice.

The research teams selected the American long grain rice as samples to clone and studied its shape regulating genes. The research showed that if they located the GL7 genes which were the shape regulating genes of American long grain rice in a section of chromosome, it would significantly improve the appearance quality of rice. The research result also revealed that locating the GL7 genes into ordinary rice variety could improve the appearance quality of common rice while not influencing the production.

The research showed that the American long grain rice had been introduced into Japan, but because of genomic structural variation, it showed the short round characteristic. The reason for the high quality of Yue Feng in Guangdong Province was that it aggregated advantages of two genes at the same time. Meanwhile, it proved from the flank that rice gene copy number variation could control the appearance quality of rice.

Time:2015.7.16

Source:China Economic Net