Exploration of rice yield potential: Decoding agronomic and physiological traits
Gengmi Li,
Jiuyou Tang,
Jiakui Zheng,
Chengcai Chu
Affiliations
Gengmi Li
State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Innovative Academy for Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture/Luzhou Branch of National Rice Improvement Center, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, Sichuan, China
Jiuyou Tang
State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Innovative Academy for Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Jiakui Zheng
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture/Luzhou Branch of National Rice Improvement Center, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, Sichuan, China; Corresponding authors.
Chengcai Chu
State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Innovative Academy for Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; College of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Corresponding authors.
Rice grain yield is determined by three major “visible” morphological traits: grain weight, grain number per panicle, and effective tiller number, which are affected by a series of “invisible” physiological factors including nutrient use efficiency and photosynthetic efficiency. In the past few decades, substantial progress has been made on elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying grain yield formation, laying a solid foundation for improving rice yield by molecular breeding. This review outlines our current understanding of the three morphological yield-determining components and summarizes major progress in decoding physiological traits such as nutrient use efficiency and photosynthetic efficiency. It also discusses the integration of current knowledge about yield formation and crop improvement strategies including genome editing with conventional and molecular breeding.
