By giving a Chinese rice variety a second copy of one of its own genes, researchers have boosted its yield by up to 40%.
Key highlights
- When a second copy of a single gene (called OsDREB1C) is added to rice, it improves photosynthesis and nitrogen use, speeds up flowering and absorbing nitrogen more efficiently — offering larger and more abundant grains.
- The change helps the plant absorb more fertilizer, boosts photosynthesis, and accelerates flowering, all of which could contribute to larger harvests. India is the world’s largest exporter of rice.
- It exported 18.75 million metric tons to over 150 countries during the year 2021-22, thereby earning $6.11 billion. This is a vast improvement from what it did a few years ago.
- Vietnam turns out to be the second most producer of rice, and it produced 6.5 million tonnes in 2021-2022.
- It has to be much more than the 18.75 million tons for India to continue and expand its role as the world’s largest producer and exporter of rice.
- It is here that the above-mentioned paper from China by Wei et al. in Science is of value.
- A key point is that the researchers have added the same gene again, and not any foreign one.
- This is best described as genetic modulation. It is not a genetic modification (GM) and neither is the result a transgenic plant, carrying elements from another donor.
- Gene modulation refers to the process of temporarily altering gene expression levels without making heritable changes to the underlying cellular DNA.