Developing Rice with Increased Resistance to Salinity and Drought

粮食生产需要大幅扩大，以养活不断增长的人口。干旱和盐碱地是严重抑制全球农业生产的两种环境条件，据估计，在这些压力普遍存在的地区，大约有20-30%的水稻产量损失。为了限制这种损失，我们必须通过育种或利用工程技术开发出对这些压力更有抵抗力的水稻品种。育种和工程方法都需要了解促成耐受性的基因。这不仅将帮助我们理解植物用来对胁迫作出反应的分子机制，而且这种“积极”基因的积累将增强水稻对干旱和盐度的抵御能力。在本项目中，我们建议使用一种称为GWAS（基因组全关联研究）的技术来鉴定水稻抗旱性和耐盐性重要的基因（等位基因）的（新）基因和变异。与之前的工作相反，我们在进行GWAS时使用了非常具体的特征，以最大限度地提高我们针对正确基因的信心。我们将通过分析等位基因的功能进一步确认其相关性，例如通过删除和随后对“敲除”植株的表征。经过这些严格的“质量控制”后，阳性等位基因将被引入到越南和菲律宾普遍种植的现有高产品种中。引进可以通过分子育种（杂交植物）来实现，这是一个成熟但非常耗时的过程。与此同时，我们计划使用最先进的基因工程技术，这将大大加快这一过程，这一点很重要，因为有许多有益的等位基因需要转移。引入这些现代工程或“基因组编辑”技术也是至关重要的，因为它避免了公众接受度低的转基因生物的缺点。

Food production needs to be expanded drastically to feed an ever growing human population. Drought and saline soils are two environmental conditions that greatly depress agricultural production around the globe and it is estimated that around 20-30% of rice yield is lost in areas where these stresses are prevalent. To limit such losses, it is imperative that we develop rice varieties that are more resistant to these stresses, either through breeding or by using engineering. Both breeding and engineering approaches require knowledge about the genes that contribute to tolerance. Not only will that help us understand the molecular mechanisms that plants use to respond to stress, the accumulation of such 'positive' genes will enhance rice resilience to drought and salinity. In this project we propose to use a technique called GWAS (genome wide association studies) to identify (new) genes and variations in genes (alleles) that are important in rice drought and salt tolerance. In contrast to previous work, we use very specific traits when we carry out GWAS to maximise our confidence that we are targeting the right genes. We will further confirm the relevance of the identified alleles by analysing their function, for example via deletion and subsequent characterisation of the 'knock out' plant. After these stringent 'quality controls' the positive alleles will be introduced into existing, high yielding varieties that are commonly grown in Vietnam and the Philippines. Introduction can be achieved via molecular breeding (crossing plants), a well established but very time consuming process. In parallel, we plan to use state of the art genetic engineering which will greatly accelerate the process which is important because there are many beneficial alleles that need to be transferred. The introduction of these modern engineering, or 'genome editing', techniques is also vital because it avoids the drawbacks of genetically modified organisms which have low public acceptance.