Category: Mainstream

Cutting through the hype, there may be some substance in the announcement by the University of Arizona that it is leading a team funded to the tune of USD 9.9 million “to develop ‘super rice’“. ² The plan is to understand the genomes of all 24 rice species, the better to breed the two species — Oryza sativa and O. glaberrima — that yield the rice crop.

The announcement contains a lot of information about how this effort will help researchers to understand the evolutionary history and current functioning of rice. But there’s also a food security angle, natch.

“During the domestication process, people end up selecting a couple of plants and crossing them,” [said University of Arizona plant scientist Rod] Wing. “This way, one of them became the founder of all the domesticated plants. That variety was then improved over thousands of years, but it contains only a very small variety of genes that could be used for crop improvement.” … This so-called domestication bottleneck leads to crop plants with highly desirable traits such as high yield but deficiencies in other areas such as compromised ability to fight off diseases or cope with droughts.

I expect the researchers might be wondering whether they can duplicate the domestication events that resulted in modern rice, as wheat researchers did in constructing synthetic bread wheats, injecting a whole lot more agricultural biodiversity into the crop.

And here’s a cool idea; spend some of the loot on public awareness:

As an outreach component, the project will include a biannual Plant Science Family Night program at Ventana Vista Elementary School in Tucson, targeting K-5 students and families, with the goal of getting children and their families in the greater Tucson area excited about plants and the role plant science plays in ensuring a safe, sustainable and secure food supply for our planet.

Shouldn’t every big grant do something similar?