New rice gene granted national invention patent

A rice breeding base in Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou province. [Photo/guiyang.gov.cn]

Guizhou Zhunong High Tech Seed Industry Co, in collaboration with its subsidiary Anhui Shenggu Agricultural Technology Co, recently independently developed and cloned a dwarfing gene for rice (sdlr5), which has been granted a national invention patent. Rice is one of the world's three major food crops and is the most extensively planted, highest yielding, and most productive grain crop in China, playing a crucial role in national food security.

Since the onset of the Green Revolution, rice yields have significantly increased, but lodging (the bending over of the stems) has become a major limiting factor for high and stable rice yields. Therefore, breeding rice varieties resistant to lodging has become a primary goal. Reducing plant height can effectively address lodging issues, but it also significantly reduces grain yield.

To address the shortcomings of existing dwarf and semi-dwarf gene resources, the breeding team at Guizhou Zhunong High Tech Seed Industry Co has independently created new dwarf rice resources through EMS mutagenesis. They discovered a new semi-dominant dwarfing gene, named sdlr5, which controls plant height.

The rice variety Zhu 99A, developed using this gene, exhibits characteristics of dwarfism, lodging resistance, high quality, high yield, and broad adaptability. Zhu 99A passed the technical appraisal organized by the Guizhou Crop Variety Appraisal Committee in August 2020.