Scientists have pinpointed a gene that enables rice plants to produce around 20% more grain by increasing uptake of phosphorus, an important, but limited, plant nutrient.
The discovery unlocks the potential to improve the food security of rice farmers with the lowest value phosphorus-deficient land allowing them to grow more rice to add to global production, and earn more.
The gene – called PSTOL1 which stands for Phosphorus Starvation Tolerance – helps rice grow a larger, better root system and thereby access more phosphorus. Farmers can apply phosphorus fertilizers to increase productivity but on problem soils phosphorus is often locked in the soil and unavailable to plants.
Also, phosphorus fertilizer is often unaffordable to poor farmers. Adding to the problem is that phosphorus is a non-renewable natural resource and rock phosphate reserves – the source of most phosphorus fertilizers – are running out.
“For many years we have searched for genes that improve phosphorus uptake,” said Dr. Sigrid Heuer, senior scientist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, a member of the CGIAR Consortium), and leader of the team that published the discovery in Nature.
“We’ve known for a long time that the traditional rice variety Kasalath from India has a set of genes that helps rice grow well in soils low in phosphorus,” she added. “We have now hit the jackpot and found PSTOL1, the major gene responsible for improved phosphorus uptake and understand how it works.”
The discovery of the PSTOL1 gene means that rice breeders will be able to breed new rice varieties faster and more easily, and with 100% certainty their new rice will have the gene.
As BBC reports ’The package of science is all openly published and publicly accessible with no intellectual property rights involved, which was a condition of funding from the CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme‘.
For more information
Underground solution to starving rice plants (IRRI Press Release)
The protein kinase Pstol1 from traditional rice confers tolerance of phosphorus deficiency (Nature)
Researchers identify gene that improves rice yields in poor soil (Reuters)
Wild Rice Gene gives yield boost (BBC)