Salt-Tolerant Rice 'Could Aid Japan's Tsunami Farmers'
Posted by Unknown in Flood, Food Security, Japan, Plant Breeding, Research and Technology, Rice, United Kingdom (UK) on Tuesday 29 January 2013
UK
scientists have claimed a breakthrough in research on rice that could
help farmers devastated by last year's tsunami in Japan.
Researchers
in Norwich said a method of identifying and isolating crop traits has
been developed that means new varieties could be created in a year.
A Sainsbury Laboratory scientist said Japanese farmers could now grow a salt-resistant crop within two years.
It previously took up to 10 years to develop new crop strains, he said.
Much
of the agricultural land to the north east of Japan was drenched in sea
salt from the tsunami, which has since made it hard for rice to grow.
As
part of the research between the UK and Japan, a spokeswoman from the
Sainsbury Laboratory said seven salt-tolerant mutants have now been
identified in a particular type of rice, meaning breeders could be
creating usable varieties for Japanese farmers in the next few years.
"This is a huge leap forward," said Dr Brande Wulff from the Sainsbury Laboratory at Norwich Research Park.
Crop traits
"Advances in technology allow us to sequence plant genomes and identify gene variants that give rise to desirable traits.
"Our colleagues in Japan have already identified mutants that are more salt-resistant.
"Now
it's just a matter for them to back-cross those mutants to the parental
variety and clean up the background - get rid of the bad mutations and
keep the good one - and then bulk up the seed provided to the farmers,"
he said.
Crop
traits such as drought and salt tolerance, plant height and yield are
often controlled by many genes, with each having a subtle effect, the
laboratory spokesman said.
It is therefore difficult to identify the complete genetic basis for a particular characteristic, he added.
But
in the new research method, called MutMap, the laboratory said
scientists can now identify the characteristics by working with an
"elite" rice and creating mutants that harbour different traits.
'Genomics revolution'
Once
a mutant is identified with the desired trait, for example salt
tolerance, this can then be crossed with the original rice and grown in a
field.
The difference between the offspring of this cross and the elite rice can then be identified.
The
changes detected are called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) and
insertion-deletions (indels), which are tiny genetic improvements that
can be observed using genome sequencing.
"Until
now, plant breeding has not been able to take advantage of the genomics
revolution," said Professor Ryohei Terauchi, from Japan's Iwate
Biotechnology Research Centre.
"MutMap
overcomes one of the greatest limitations, which has been the time it
takes to identify genetic markers for desirable traits."
Results from the study have been published in Nature Biotechnology.
