Rice Mutant Bank and Resource Platform

• Research unit: SDC
• Project number: 7F-01698.01

Key words (German)

Reis
Agrarwirtschaft
Landwirtschaft
Technologie
IRRI
International Rice Research Institute

Key words (English)

Rice
IRRI
International Rice Research Institute
Plants Genomics

Short description (English)

Advances in rice science and plant improvement are essential for the future sustainability of rice production, particularly in unfavourable environments facing multiple biological and physical limitations. Future rice research must rely on a biological understanding of the rice plant. Plant genomics offers opportunities to find solutions by discovering new genes and functions of the rice plant. With the anticipation that all rice sequence information will soon be available, most attention is now on the assignment of biological functions to the DNA sequences. Due to the increasing protective environment imposed by intellectual property rights and proprietary technologies, only a narrow window of opportunity exists to develop a public resource platform through which gene discovery and innovation are accessible to the developing world.

Project aims (English)

The overall goal of this proposal is to develop mutant resources and genomic tools, and to make them broadly accessible for the improvement of rice. By creating and maintaining a mutant bank for gene discovery in the public domain, IRRI is promoting accessibility to new knowledge and tools for many rice improvement programs. The existing mutant collection to capture most of the important biological variation in rice will be expanded. Mutant characterisation will be integrated with high-throughput technology to discover new genes controlling important agronomic traits. The project will:

Accelerate the implementation of a public resource platform,
Deliver useful genes for germplasm improvement,
And provide training to NARS scientists to conduct research in functional genomics.