Breeding strategies to improve rice yields: an overview

Description

This chapter examines three different major strategies designed to break the ‘yield barrier’ so that rice production keeps up with population growth: new ideotype breeding, heterosis and green super rice. The chapter shows that exploring the genetic diversity of wild Oryza species may lead to identification of novel and superior alleles, which may have been ignored during the process of crop domestication. The chapter describes the traits determining rice yield: number of grains per panicle, panicle size and branching, and grain weight. It shows that by deploying a particular gene or gene combinations in the breeding programmes, desired phenotype and yield enhancement of rice can be achieved. Molecular markers for marker-assisted selection processes to pyramid yield-related genes are also discussed in this chapter, which suggests future trends for research to enable a second ‘green revolution’.

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Modern breeding techniques to increase rice yield: ideotype breeding, heterosis and green super rice 3 Genetic diversity and utilization of wild Oryza species 4 The use of Multi-parent Advanced Generation Inter-Cross (MAGIC) populations in breeding 5 Molecular marker techniques 6 Understanding and enhancing yield traits 7 Deploying novel alleles of known genes 8 Future trends and conclusion 9 Where to look for further information 10 Competing interests 11 Authors’ contributions 12 Acknowledgements 13 References