China Boost Crop Yields

 

Could this new stress-tolerant rice from China boost crop yields?


New method of regulating plant hormones allows researchers to increase quality and yields of rice crops grown in saline soil


Food scientists in China have found a new way to regulate plant hormones that could hold promise for boosting the yields and quality of crops such as rice, as global warming shrinks the world’s available agricultural land.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University discovered that they could grow more stress-tolerant rice even in saline soil by regulating a hormone called gibberellin with a “new post-Green Revolution gene”.

“Soil alkalinisation and global warming are predicted to pose major challenges to agriculture in the future, as they continue to accelerate, markedly reducing global arable land and crop yields,” the team wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday.

“In this study, we have proposed a previously unknown concept that precise regulation of gibberellin at optimal medium levels is the preferred solution to confer high grain yield and tolerance to alkali–thermal stresses simultaneously.”

The Green Revolution of the 20th century refers to the development of high-yield crop varieties – notably wheat and rice – through incorporation of semi-dwarf genes, which allow for shorter and more compact varieties with increased yields.

The discovery of genes such as the semi-dwarf 1, which modulates gibberellic acid biosynthesis, helped to increase food production and security. However, poor agricultural management practices such as the overuse of pesticides and fertilisers have led to soil degradation.

Worldwide around 1.4 billion hectares of land – just over 10 per cent of the global total – has been affected by salinity, according to a report published late last year by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Increased salinity and elevated sodium levels – known as sodicity – can lead to soil conditions such as alkalinity, which reduce crop yields. Rising sea levels, coastal flooding, and inadequate agricultural practices such as poor irrigation and drainage, all contribute to soil alkalinisation, according to the FAO.

As global temperatures rise and areas of alkaline soil increase, researchers are looking to new plant varieties that are more resistant to these conditions.

The Chinese team screened more than 30,000 genetic materials in rice and identified two alkali- and heat-resistant genes called ATT1 and ATT2, according to CAS.

By regulating the biosynthesis of gibberellin, the team found that ATT1 could induce larger fluctuations in hormone levels, while ATT2 was better suited to fine-tuning gibberellin to optimal medium levels.

Reaching the right balance was key, since hormone levels that were too high or too low led to yield loss.

Under alkaline soil conditions, increasing the expression of ATT2 resulted in grain yield gains of 78 to 101 per cent per plot compared with the control plants, according to the paper.

“ATT2 may have great potential to allow plant breeders to address food insecurity caused by the combination of population growth, decreases in arable land and a rapidly changing climate,” the team said.

“ATT2 is expected to be a potential new post-Green Revolution gene that could be harnessed to develop and use marginal lands for sustainable agriculture in the future.”

The team also showed that supplementing plants with gibberellic acid could reduce yield loss and improve tolerance to environmental stress, which has been reported to reduce gibberellin levels in plants.

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