Abstract
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a staple food for more than half of the world's population. To meet the ever-increasing demand for food, because of population growth and improved living standards, world rice production needs to double by 20301. The development of new elite rice varieties with high yield and superior quality is challenging for traditional breeding approaches, and new strategies need to be developed. Here, we report the successful development of new elite varieties by pyramiding major genes that significantly contribute to grain quality and yield from three parents over five years. The new varieties exhibit higher yield potential and better grain quality than their parental varieties and the China's leading super-hybrid rice, Liang-you-pai-jiu (LYP9 or Pei-ai 64S/93-11). Our results demonstrate that rational design is a powerful strategy for meeting the challenges of future crop breeding, particularly in pyramiding multiple complex traits.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 91535205, 91435105 and 31521064), the National Key Basic Research Program (grant no. 2013CBA014) and the ‘Strategic Priority Research Program’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDA08000000).
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Q.Q., J.L. and Y.W. designed the project; D.Z. and Y.R. performed the experiments in this study; D.Z., G.D., Y.Y., L.H. and Y.L. performed the molecular assistant selection; D.Z., C.S. and G.Z. contributed to measuring the grain ECQ; J.X., J.H., L.Z. and Z.G. evaluated the taste and palatability of the cooked rice; Z.T. and G.X. were responsible for the development of the gene markers; Z.T., L.G. and X.H. performed the statistical analysis; and D.Z., Z.T., Q.Q. and J.L. wrote the manuscript.
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Zeng, D., Tian, Z., Rao, Y. et al. Rational design of high-yield and superior-quality rice. Nature Plants 3, 17031 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.31
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