LSCHL4 from Japonica Cultivar, which is allelic to NAL1, increases yield of indica super rice 93-11.

The basic premise of high yield in rice is to improve leaf photosynthetic efficiency and coordinate the source-sink relationship in rice plants. Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) related to morphological traits and chlorophyll content of rice leaves were detected at the stages of heading to maturity, and a major QTL (qLSCHL4) related to flag leaf shape and chlorophyll content was detected at both stages in recombinant inbred lines constructed using the indica rice cultivar 93-11 and the japonica rice cultivar Nipponbare. Map-based cloning and expression analysis showed that LSCHL4 is allelic to NAL1, a gene previously reported in narrow leaf mutant of rice. Overexpression lines transformed with vector carrying LSCHL4 from Nipponbare and a near-isogenic line of 93-11 (NIL-9311) had significantly increased leaf chlorophyll content, enlarged flag leaf size, and improved panicle type. The average yield of NIL-9311 was 18.70% higher than that of 93-11. These results indicate that LSCHL4 had a pleiotropic function. Exploring and pyramiding more high-yield alleles resembling LSCHL4 for super rice breeding provides an effective way to achieve new breakthroughs in raising rice yield and generate new ideas for solving the problem of global food safety.

Dissecting yield-associated loci in super hybrid rice by resequencing recombinant inbred lines and improving parental genome sequences.

The growing world population and shrinkage of arable land demand yield improvement of rice, one of the most important staple crops. To elucidate the genetic basis of yield and uncover its associated loci in rice, we resequenced the core recombinant inbred lines of Liang-You-Pei-Jiu, the widely cultivated super hybrid rice, and constructed a high-resolution linkage map. We detected 43 yield-associated quantitative trait loci, of which 20 are unique. Based on the high-density physical map, the genome sequences of paternal variety 93-11 and maternal cultivar PA64s of Liang-You-Pei-Jiu were significantly improved. The large recombinant inbred line population combined with plentiful high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms and insertions/deletions between parental genomes allowed us to fine-map two quantitative trait loci, qSN8 and qSPB1, and to identify days to heading8 and lax panicle1 as candidate genes, respectively. The quantitative trait locus qSN8 was further confirmed to be days to heading8 by a complementation test. Our study provided an ideal platform for molecular breeding by targeting and dissecting yield-associated loci in rice.

Characterization of physiological response and identification of associated genes under heat stress in rice seedlings.

Global warming, which is caused by greenhouse gas emissions, makes food crops more vulnerable to heat stress. Understanding the heat stress-related mechanisms in crops and classifying heat stress-related genes can increase our knowledge in heat-resistant molecular biology and propel developments in molecular design breeding, which can help rice cope with unfavorable temperatures. In this study, we carried out a physiological analysis of rice plants after heat stress. The results show a dramatic increase in malondialdehyde contents and SOD activities. We successfully isolated 11 heat-related rice genes with known function annotation through DNSH, which is an improved SSH method for screening long cDNA fragments. The reanalysis of microarray data from public database revealed that all these genes displayed various expression patterns after heat stress, drought, cold and salt. Quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR was also performed to validate the expression of these genes after heat stress. The expressions in 10 genes were all significantly changed except for contig 77, which is a CBL-interacting protein kinase. Several reports have been published about the members of the same gene family.

Genetic dissection for leaf correlative traits of rice (Oryza sativa L.) under drought stress.

Water is becoming a restricted factor of agricultural development owing to the global shortage of water resources. Screening and improving drought tolerant rice cultivars would be helpful for increasing and stabilizing yield, economizing water and reducing environmental pollution. In this study, 127 rice lines of DII population derived from an indica variety Zhaiyeqing 8 (ZYQ8) and a japonica variety Jingxi 17 (JX17) were used to locate QTLs for leaf rolling, relative water content and rate of electric conductivity under drought stress. The results showed that significant differences between the parents were detected for all measured traits. The tremendous transgressive segregations for these traits were observed in the population. The frequency of all traits in the population was approximately normally distributed with slight skew. A total of six QTLs for the three traits were detected with molecular linkage map of 234 markers, including three QTLs (qLR-1, qLR-5 and qLR-11) for leaf rolling, two QTLs (qRWC-1 and qRWC-6) for relative water content and one QTL (qREC-6) for rate of electric conductivity. Visual measurement for leaf rolling can be used to screen a large number of rice germplasm resources or varieties, which is of importance to screening and utilization of drought tolerant rice varieties.

[QTL analysis for percentage of exserted stigma in rice (Oryza sativa L.)].

Percentage of exserted stigmas (PES) was investigated in Hainan by using a population of 127 DH population derived from a cross between a high-PES indica variety Zaiyeqing 8 (ZYQ 8) and a low-PES japonica variety Jingxi 17(JX 17) and its molecular linkage map of 234 markers. Two QTLs (qPES-2, qPES-3) for PES were located on chromosome 2 and 3, respectively. There is no difference between the QTLs for single stigma exsertation and total PES, but the only QTL for dual stigma exsertation located on chromosome 2, whose positive additive effect was from ZYQ 8. Simultaneously the detected QTLs for spikelets per panicle located on chromosome 6,8, respectively and had no linkage relation with the QTLs for PES.