What is the prospect of sea rice and what are the positive implications of sea rice production?
My country is amazing! The seawater rice in Qingdao is under development, and it is expected to be sown in April next year and harvested in autumn. It is said that the invention of seawater rice can support 200 million people! Let's take a look at the positive meanings of seawater rice production!
Sea rice is a great achievement. Progress comes through exploration. I admire this spirit of innovation. Yuan Longping, a scientist who can solve the problem of food for the people, is developing seawater rice in Qingdao. He should be the wealthiest person. The best reward should be given, and millions of dollars are not enough!
What is seawater rice?
Wild rice contains special potential genes, but most wild rice has gradually become modern cultivated rice through long-term evolution. These genes have been lost. Once "Sea rice 86"is identified as wild rice, it will have a major impact on the research and breeding of rice varieties that are salt-tolerant.
"Given that seawater rice has strong salt and water resistance, the expert group unanimously believes that it is a unique rice germplasm resource with high scientific research and utilization value. It is recommended that the country strengthen the comprehensive protection of seawater rice resources and vigorously support systematic research."Yesterday afternoon, the seawater rice expert group's evaluation and comments were finally finalized. The breakthrough of seawater rice discoverer, Chen Risheng from Zhanjiang, after 28 years of perseverance, has finally been achieved - seawater rice's salt tolerance has been preliminarily recognized by experts, and the application for the origin to be a national protection base has been approved.
The future of seawater rice
Can rice be grown in seawater? Yes! On the morning of yesterday, with the signing and relocation of the Qingdao seawater rice research and development center led by Professor Yuan Longping, it marks that "saline land" in Qingdao can also become "fertile land". Professor Yuan Longping said that within 3 years, seawater rice with a yield of 300 kilograms per mu will be developed, and it will be sown in April next year and harvested in autumn, so that Qingdao citizens can taste Shanghai rice in autumn next year. And Professor Yuan Longping himself spends at least 3 months each year in Qingdao researching seawater rice.
The Qingdao seawater rice research and development center is located at Qingdao City, Li Cang District, 16, and there is a 30-mu seawater rice research and breeding base in the northern part of. The project's initial funding is 100 million yuan. Currently, there are about 150 million acres of saline land in China, of which 20 million acres have potential for rice cultivation. After successful trial planting and promotion, with a yield of 200-300 kilograms per mu, it can increase grain production by 500 billion kilograms, supporting about 200 million people.
The positive meanings of seawater rice production
Human's agricultural production is directly affected by the environment and climate. With the changes in the Earth's climate and environment, the occurrence of extreme weather will become more frequent, and drought and soil salinization are the two most prominent factors hindering agricultural production. Rice (Oryza sativa) as the most water-consuming major crop, is most affected. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) located in the Philippines has been committed to developing excellent rice varieties that are drought-resistant, salt-tolerant, heat-resistant, flood-resistant, and cold-resistant. Many research institutions and universities have also invested a lot of human and material resources in research and development. With the rapid development of modern molecular biology and genomics, gene technology is widely used in drought resistance and salt resistance research of rice. From the approximately 80 recent research reports on the genetic engineering of rice drought resistance and salt resistance published in the last few years, the genes used mostly come from rice itself, and some come from mustard, wheat,corn and so on. Most studies have adopted gene strengthening expression, and some have used reverse transcription RNA (RNAi) inhibition. They have achieved certain drought resistance and salt resistance, as well as osmotic pressure and cold resistance. However, they also have problems such as slow plant growth and reduced yield, and cannot be used in actual agricultural production. The reasons are that the genes used mostly come from ordinary rice or other plants' transcription factors or metabolic control proteins, and these genes themselves do not have special characteristics. By strengthening or inhibiting their expression to achieve drought resistance and salt resistance, they will inevitably suffer from the adverse side effects brought by their non-natural expression changes, which can harm plant growth.Finding excellent genes that are drought-resistant and salt-resistant but do not cause reduced yield is crucial for the success of gene technology. Many studies focus on screening new resistance genes from desert drought-resistant plants or other salt-resistant, cold-resistant, and heat-resistant organisms, including genes that promote root development and lodging resistance and submergence resistance. Sea rice 86 was discovered on the beach and can grow normally in seawater. The results of multi-point trials and planting over 30 years have shown that it has good salt tolerance, disease and pest resistance, lodging resistance, and submergence resistance, and it is a unique germplasm resource. If the salt tolerance, disease and pest resistance, lodging resistance, and submergence resistance genes contained in sea rice 86 can be separated and transferred to other crops, it can increase the applicable range of major crops, improve the yield of salt-tolerant crops, and effectively increase the global arable land and food supply, and improve the ecological environment of saline land, which will make a great contribution to human survival and development.
To effectively utilize the salt tolerance, disease and pest resistance, lodging resistance, and submergence resistance genes of sea rice 86, we have cooperated with Professor Xinmin Li, a professor and molecular biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his team, using the most advanced nucleic acid sequencing technology, combined with modern genomics and bioinformatics, to conduct a comprehensive genomic sequencing and transcript expression study of sea rice 86. The results show that sea rice 86 is a relatively old glutinous rice variety, and it is very close to the branching points of glutinous rice and japonica rice in the molecular evolutionary tree;
Sea rice 86 has 12 chromosomes, with a total length of 373,130,791 base pairs, which is slightly smaller than ordinary rice. Through comparison with the gene sequences of 3000 rice varieties, 42,359 unique functional variations were found in the gene sequence of sea rice 86. Growth in normal and high-salt conditions, the gene transcript expression comparison of sea rice 86 and conventional rice varieties, a large number of salt-induced genes were found, and there were significant differences in gene expression between the two varieties. These differentially expressed genes belong to known salt resistance gene families, and some are new discoveries. This laid a solid foundation for further separating salt-alkaline function genes and revealing the molecular mechanism of sea rice 86's salt resistance. Comparing the gene transcription profiles of sea rice 86 and conventional rice varieties grown under normal and high-salt conditions, a large number of salt-induced genes were found, and significant expression differences were observed between the two varieties. Some of these differentially expressed genes belong to known salt tolerance gene families, while others are newly discovered, which provides a solid foundation for further identifying genes with salt tolerance and alkaline soil adaptation functions and elucidating the molecular mechanisms of salt tolerance in sea rice 86.
