In vitro techniques for genomic alteration in rice plants

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Because of the explosive increase in world population, a sufficient food supply must be achieved by varietal improvement in the major cereal crops including rice. It is expected that new in vitro techniques incombination with conventional breeding methods may effectively raise the yield potential. On the other hand, there are many environmental problems to be solved world-wide such as, global warming, environmental pollution, ecological destruction, reduction in water supplies and so on. Therefore, it is necessary to rapidly develop new varieties for the future combining of higher yield potential with excellent grain quality, and resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses for the promotion of sustainable agriculture. Although many efforts have been made to introduce useful traits from wild species to cultivated rice via hybridization, it is still difficult to overcome breeding barriers such as cross incompatibility and hybrid sterility and inviability in practical breeding. Now in vitro techniques are going to make it possible to use genetic manipulation and cell culture and fusion techniques to speed up the breeding process. For sustainable agriculture, it is important to utilize the useful genes from alien species. For this purpose, asymmetric protoplast fusions have already been used successfully to transfer disease resistance in Brassica napus. In this experiment, a high level of resistance to the rice blast disease was transferred from wild species through asymmetric fusions. It is also noted that manipulation of cytoplasmic genomes is possible through asymmetric fusions as shown in the induction of new cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS).