Chinese scientists successfully cloned hybrid rice seeds

The Wang Kejian team of the State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology, China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China , established a rice apomixis system using gene editing technology, and successfully cloned hybrid rice seeds so that the hybrid rice traits can be stably inherited to the next generation. The result was published online in the journal Nature·Biotechnology on the evening of the 4th.

Hybrid rice is superior to parents in terms of viability, stress resistance, adaptability and yield, and has made important contributions to promoting agricultural production. The data show that the annual planting area of hybrid rice in China is more than 240 million mu, accounting for 57% of the total rice planting area, and the output accounts for about 65% of the total rice production. Hybrid rice has an annual increase of about 2.5 million tons, which can feed 70 million people a year.

Because the progeny of hybrid seeds will be separated and cannot maintain their heterosis, the breeder must spend a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources to produce seeds every year. Farmers must also purchase new seeds every year.

“Scientists have long believed that apomixis can solve this problem. Apomixis is a reproductive method that uses asexual reproduction by seeds, and can change heterozygous genotypes of hybrids with generations to achieve heterosis. Fixed, this is expected to bring a new revolution to agricultural production." Wang Kejian said.

In the experiment, the researchers selected the hybrid rice variety Chunyou 84 as a model variety of rice apomixis research, using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology to knock out four rice reproductive-related genes in Chunyou 84 to make hybrid rice production. Apomictic traits and the same cloned seeds as hybrid rice. The researchers determined through further testing that the progeny plants grown by cloning seeds were highly similar to the first generation hybrid rice.

"This work proves the feasibility of hybridization of a hybrid rice, which is a major breakthrough in the field of apomixis research, and has great theoretical significance." "The father of hybrid rice" and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Yuan Longping said that he hopes the researchers will continue to work harder. Apply the results to production as soon as possible.