Abstract
To maximize crop growth, crops need to capture sunlight efficiently. This property is primarily influenced by the shape of the crops such as the angle, area, and arrangement of leaves. We constructed a rice (Oryza sativa L.) inbred line that displayed an ideal transition of plant shapes in terms of sunlight receiving efficiency. During vegetative growth, this line exhibited tiller spreading with increased tiller number, which formed a parabolic antenna-like structure. The architecture probably improved light reception efficiency of individuals compared with the recurrent parent. The line achieved not only acceleration of the vegetative growth, but also significant suppression of weed growth under the canopy. The increased light reception efficiency of the line has consequently reduced the amount of incident light to the ground and supplied significant competitiveness against weeds. The spread tillers became erect from the entry of the reproductive growth phase, adaptively sustaining light reception efficiency in thicker stands. The line carries a small chromosomal segment from Oryza rufipogon Griff., a putative progenitor of Asian cultivated rice. The introduced chromosome segment had little effect on grain yield and quality. Our results shed light on potentials hidden in the wild rice chromosome segment to achieve the valuable traits.
Highlights
Asian cultivated rice, Oryza sativa (O. sativa), is one of the world’s most important crops, sustaining several billion people as a staple food (Global Rice Science Partnership, 2013)
O. sativa was domesticated from a wild rice species, Oryza rufipogon (O. rufipogon), which is distributed throughout Asia and Oceania (Chen et al, 2019)
Modern breeding has certainly attained some success in constructing elite cultivars using the limited amount of genetic variation still retained in cultivated rice plants and acquired mutations in key genes involved in critical agricultural traits; this strategy has been sometimes confronted with limits attributed to a low level of genetic variation
Summary
Oryza sativa (O. sativa), is one of the world’s most important crops, sustaining several billion people as a staple food (Global Rice Science Partnership, 2013). Monteith (1965) and Duncan et al (1967) reported that inclined leaves are more efficient in perceiving light when there is no mutual shading as typically found in plants with a low leaf area index (LAI), implying that a spreading phenotype is preferable for plants during the early vegetative growth phase. The ideal plant shape for rice to improve weed competitiveness is a plant with many tillers and sloping leaves (Gibson et al, 2003; Koarai and Morita, 2003) These traits would form a deep canopy, limit light penetration onto the ground, and suppress the growth of weeds under the canopy.
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