AfricaRice Project to Harness Resilient Traits from African Rice
April 23, 2014| |
AfricaRice Center (AfricaRice) has launched a project that will identify and harness high-value genes from African rice, Oryza glaberrima. Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project "Rapid mobilization of alleles for rice cultivar improvement in sub-Saharan Africa" will develop new rice varieties that can cope with the increasing challenges of drought, flooding, and soil-related constraints such as iron toxicity. AfricaRice's collection of more than 2,000 samples of this native African rice species will be used in the project.
As an initial step, genes related to iron tolerance, drought tolerance, and anaerobic germination will be identified. The genes will then be incorporated into commercially valuable rice varieties without losing useful characteristics which make them popular with farmers. The five-year project will be implemented by AfricaRice together with the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) in Japan, Cornell University in the United States, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, and the National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI) in Nigeria.
For more details about this project, read the AfricaRice news release available at http://africarice.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/project-launched-to-harness-resilient-traits-from-african-rice/.
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