Black Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Breeding

Abstract

Black rice (Oryza sativa L.) is popular with its distinct characteristics like black color grain and high anthocyanin and mineral content, including several health benefits, and mainly distributed in Asian countries like China and India. Black rice becomes more important because of its nutrient value. It has a unique history of its cultivation and consumption practices in China. Chinese emperors were only allowed to consume this rice and forbidden for others. Consumption of this rice was supposed to enhance the emperor’s health. Recent reports also depict the facts that black rice is packed with high level of nutrition’s and thus considered as a modern superfood. Daily consumption of black rice in small quantity might save us from many diseases. It is the highly priced rice available in the market. The cultivation practices of black rice are similar to other rice type. But report shows that temperate climate with well-managed agronomic practices could favor the rise in grain’s anthocyanin content than the warm climate. Black rice breeding procedure is almost similar to other rice types and mostly conventional pedigree method is used to develop new varieties. Nowadays, conventional method is integrated with marker-assisted breeding to fasten the varietal development process. China has already developed many improved black rice varieties. People are well aware about the health benefits of black rice; thus its demand is ever increasing in the market. This manuscript describes black rice with its brief history, detailed description of varietal characteristics, and cultivation practices with full package of black rice–breeding procedures. Progress of black rice with respect to mutation breeding, tissue culture techniques, and genetic engineering approaches are also discussed.