Chapter 6 - Frontiers in Rice Breeding

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Abstract

World rice production increased from 256 million tons in 1960 to 680 million tons in 2010. This has mainly been achieved through the application of principles of Mendelian genetics and conventional breeding. Around 852 million tons of rice will be required globally by 2035. Furthermore, biotic and abiotic stresses continue to threaten rice productivity. Thus, the major challenge is how to increase rice production with less land, water, chemicals, and labor, and without degradation of environmental and natural resources. Recent advances in biotechnology, particularly in molecular and cellular biology and the cutting-edge science of genomics, including high-throughput genotyping and a new generation of markers, have triggered a paradigm shift in rice breeding and offer potential to overcome some of the constraints that limit rice productivity and sustainability. New frontiers in rice breeding include the integration of molecular approaches, such as marker-assisted selection (MAS) to select cloned genes/QTLs for yield-related traits and heterosis to increase yield potential, enhanced tolerance of various biotic and abiotic stresses, and improved cooking and nutritional quality, genomic selection, mining of favorable alleles, introgression of novel genes, and the production of transgenics with new genetic properties. Advances in sequencing technologies, RNAi, genome editing, and functional genomics are expected to bring new dimensions to rice breeding.

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