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Plant Cell Rep (2014) 33:551564 DOI 10.1007/s00299-013-1551-x
REVIEW
Recent progress on molecular breeding of rice in China
Yuchun Rao Yuanyuan Li Qian Qian
Received: 22 November 2013 / Revised: 9 December 2013 / Accepted: 10 December 2013 / Published online: 19 January 2014 The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Molecular breeding of rice for high yield, superior grain quality, and strong environmental adaptability is crucial for feeding the worlds rapidly growing population. The increasingly cloned quantitative trait loci and genes, genome variations, and haplotype blocks related to agronomically important traits in rice have provided a solid foundation for direct selection and molecular breeding, and a number of genes have been successfully introgressed into mega varieties of rice. Here we summarize Chinas great achievements in molecular breeding of rice in the following ve traits: high yield, biotic stress resistance, abiotic stress resistance, quality and physiology. Further, the prospect of rice breeding by molecular design is discussed.
Keywords Molecular breeding Marker-assisted
selection Breeding design Agronomic traits Rice
breeding
Introduction
Rice is one of the most important staple crops in the world and serves as a model for monocots. In rice breeding, two breakthroughs have been made in China over the last
century. The rst breakthrough is the development of a semi-dwarf rice variety in the 1960s, which raised rice yield by more than 20 % per unit area; the second breakthrough is the development of a hybrid rice variety with the three-line or cytoplasmic male sterile system in the 1970s, which led to another great increase in average rice yield by 20 % (Yuan 1987). The previous achievements have contributed greatly to the self-sufciency in Chinas food supply. Thereafter, however, no substantial progress has been made in improving rice yield. In 1986 and 1996, International Rice Research Institute and China launched the Super Rice Breeding Program to ght in stages for increasing rice yield. Recently, rapid economic development and population growth have placed heavy pressure on crop production in China. To meet the security of food supply, we must increase the crop yield per unit area by 50 % before 2030 (Cheng and Hu 2008). In this context, it is imperative to nd new applicable methods for rice breeding.
Conventional...