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Development and Commercialization of Drought and Salinity Stress Tolerant (DST) Rice for India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia Rice is the staple food in the Indonesian diet, accounting for more than half of the calories consumed. It is also the source of livelihood for about 40 million households, or about 200 million people, covering a total of around 10 million hectares throughout the archipelago, primarily in the lowlands. In 1987, irrigated lowland covered 58% of the total area cultivated with rice, rain-fed land accounted for 20%, and dry-land cultivation, together with swamp or tidal cultivation, covered the remaining 22%. Rice production in Indonesia continuously faces the challenge of keeping pace with an annual population increase, while the area of fertile wetland (lowland) available for rice farming is steadily decreasing due to urbanization and industrialization. To satisfy the demand for rice in the next decades, Indonesia will have to expand rice cultivation to marginal dry-land (upland) areas, where rice production is severely hampered by dehydration stress due to drought. More than 90% of the decrease in rice production is a direct result of a reduction in planted area in response to the drought. To develop and commercialize transgenic rice with drought and salnity tolerance.
Professor Ray Wu at Cornell University has successfully demonstrated in greenhouse trials that rice transformed to overproduce a naturally occurring sugar can withstand drought and salinity stress. The technique includes the over-expression of Escherichia coli trehalose biosynthetic genes (otsA and otsB) as a fusion gene for manipulating abiotic stress tolerance in rice. The fusion gene has the advantages of necessitating only a single transformation event and a higher net catalytic efficiency for trehalose formation. The expression of the transgene is under the control of either tissue-specific or stress-dependent promoters. ABSPII will support Cornell in the development of the next generation of drought and salinity stress tolerant (DST) rice lines, and in assisting public sector researchers in India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia in acquiring it through collaboration with Wu’s lab. Seed from transformed plants of varieties widely grown in the three countries will be created at Cornell by Asian researchers. In addition, the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, India may import plasmids from Wu’s lab for transformation of locally-identified varieties. Cooperating Asian researchers will be trained in the necessary techniques and conduct the contained and field testing necessary to verify the efficacy of the transformed lines. If efficacy is confirmed, ABSPII will support further work toward commercialization.
Countries for deployment include India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Collaborators are the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University and the Cornell Research Foundation in the USA; The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the Directorate of Rice Research (DRR), and the Central Soil Sciences Research institute (CSSRI) in India; and the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Bangladesh. |
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