A global research team achieved a 95% success rate in cloning the seeds of a hybrid variety of rice. SciTechDaily reports that such a breakthrough may potentially reduce hybrid rice seed costs and lead to disease-resistant and high-yield strains of rice. Such strains could be accessed by farmers with limited resources.
Hybrid Rice Varieties
The research was included in the Nature Communications journal.
Crops that result from first-generation hybrids usually show heightened performance in comparison to their parental predecessors. This is known as hybrid vigor. However, such improvements do not always remain as hybrids get bred again for the second time. Because of such limitations, farmers who want varieties that perform well must procure a new batch of seeds for each planting season.
Phys reports that rice, which is the staple for 50% of the global population, is comparatively expensive to cultivate as a hybrid for a heightened improvement of around 10%. This implies that rice farmers have yet to benefit from the advantages of these hybrids.
This was according to adjunct professor emeritus Gurdev Khush from the University of California's Department of Plant Science. Starting in 1967, he was part of the International Rice Research Institute from up until he retired in 2002. He directed efforts toward coming up with different varieties of rice with high yields, earning him the World Food Prize way back in 1996.
One potential solution to such limitations would be to cultivate clones that stay identical throughout various generations without breeding further. Phys notes that there are various wild plants that can come up with clone seeds through a process known as apomixis.
Khush says that, if one has a hybrid and if apomixis can be induced, it can be planted each year. However, inducing apomixis into major plants has been quite a hard feat.
Agriculture Breakthrough
Back in 2019, a team of professor Venkatesan Sundaresan and assistant professor Imtiyaz Khanday were able to successfully induce apomixis within rice plants. Around 30% of the seeds were clones.
Now, Sundaresan, Khanday, and other colleagues from Germany, Ghana, and France were able to achieve 95% clonal efficiency. They also demonstrated that the entire process could be sustained for over three generations.
The process involves engineering MiMe genes that make the plants change from meiosis to mitosis. Yet another modification of genes induces apomixis. As a result, the seed grows to become a plant that is genetically the same as its parent plant.
Khush says that such a method would enable seed companies to more rapidly come up with hybrid seeds on a significantly larger scale. It could also offer seeds to farmers that they may store and replant through various seasons.
Sundaresan expresses how apomixis among crop plants has been a global research aim for over three decades. This is because such processes have the capacity to make hybrid seed production accessible to all. The yield increases could help cater to the global demand of a growing population without the need for unsustainable levels of water, land, and fertilizer.
He also says that these findings could be applied to different crops as well. Rice is a particular genetic model for other crops, including wheat and maize, that serve as global staples.
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