International Team Develops “Waterproof” Rice

An international team of researchers hopes that flood-tolerant rice plants will be available to smallholder farmers in flood-prone areas within the next two years. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is leading this initiative through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Tests in farmers’ fields in Bangladesh and India have shown that “waterproof” versions of popular varieties of rice can withstand two weeks of complete submergence. The varieties are identical to their susceptible counterparts, but recover after severe flooding to produce abundant yields of high-quality grain.

University of California Riverside’s Julia Bailey-Serres, a professor of genetics, is leading the work to determine how Sub1A, a gene in a low-yielding traditional Indian rice variety, confers flood tolerance in the new varieties of rice. “Sub1A effectively makes the plant dormant during submergence, allowing it to conserve energy until the floodwaters recede,” said Bailey-Serres of the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences and the Center for Plant Cell Biology. 

Read UC's media release at
http://newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1974