Molecular tools for achieving synthetic apomixis in hybrid rice.
2001
Benneth, J. | Bi, X.Z. | Kathiresan, A. and Khush, G.S.
Apomixis is asexual reproduction through seed. It occurs in more than 300 plant species but appears to be absent from the genus Oryza. One of the most important applications of apomixis in rice would be to develop true-breeding hybrid genotypes that would allow poor farmers to benefit from hybrid yield advantage. Although considerable progress has been made in mapping loci that control apomixis in other members of the family Poaceae, no gene capable of inducing apomixis has yet been isolated for introduction into rice. This chapter reports on the development of molecular tools to achieve a synthetic apomixis in rice, in which the sexual embryo would be replaced by an asexual embryo induced in the nucellus. We cover two objectives of the research: induction of the nucellar embryo and ablation of the zygotic embryo. We emphasize the tasks of identifying embryo-inducing genes, placing them under the control of nucellus-specific promoters, and assaying their efficacy in rice.
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