Projects Profile
Project Title
Development of Commercial Genetic Markers in Rice for Enhanced Nitrogen-use Efficiency (NUE)
Partnership
Dr. Chungui Lu from School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham
Prof. Ping Wu from Zhejiang University
Project Aim
The project applies University of Nottingham (UoN)’s existing techniques that identified the basic genetic model of wheat to rice experimental data from Zhejiang University (ZJU) to allow the rapid completion of a genetic map of rice. This genetic map will then be used to identify key genetic markers associated with NUE in rice. The recent growth in the processing power of bioinformatics and the increase in availability of biological data from high throughput technologies have allowed such an approach to become realistic. The project is the first of its nature and should be able to offer significant advantages for the breeding of crops with a higher NUE. As well as improving NUE for Chinese and UK crop cultivars, the project will also reduce the cost of conventional breeding and generate time savings.
Inspiration for the projects
Plant breeding during the 20th century achieved substantial increases in crop yields by using large quantities of inorganic fertilizer. However, the approach of using large quantities of inorganic fertilizer is unsustainable because of diminishing returns both economically and environmentally. Only about a third of the fertilizer applied is actually absorbed by crops, and 50-70% is lost from the plant-soil system. Unused fertilizer can leach into the environment where it induces algal blooms, contaminates drinking water, and depletes aquatic oxygen to create dead zones, like those found in Taihu lake pollution in China. The total demand for chemical fertilizers in China is 36-50 million tons every year; the cost of this has jumped to £1 billion (RMB12.81 billion) in 2007 from £111.8 M (RMB1.453 billion) in 2000. Fertilizer prices have almost tripled in recent 3 years in China. As such, there are both environmental and economic incentives for breeding programmes specifically targeted towards low Nitrogen (N) conditions: increasing the ability of crops to assimilate N is crucial to both yield increase and environmental protection.
Even though significant genetic background differences in nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) have been reported in crops generally, genetic selection to improve the rice crop’s NUE has not yet been carried out. This may have been because of the complexity involved in the crop genome sequences and a lack of suitable bioinformatic and genetics tools. Recent advances in plant molecular biotechnology, along with the release of the rice genome can be combined with a modern integrative systems approach. Doing so has allowed us to expand our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms controlling N assimilation and metabolism. This project focuses on applying the experience and techniques developed during this previous work to answer the biological question of which genes are responsible for the ability of certain rice varieties to produce higher yields under low nitrogen fertiliser level.
Commercial Potential and Further Development
We can use the techniques developed during our genetic modeling of wheat, and apply them to gather information for rice. This information will allow our potential industrial partners to make changes in the development of novel rice products. We will file the new patents based on the testing results which can be potentially licensed to breeding companies. Market research will be carried out in China to gather breeding information from companies. We can use this to investigate the market in China and identify the potential for commercial development.
