Genomics, Genetics, and Breeding for Rice Crop Improvement

Dear Colleagues,

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the most important cereal crop, feeding more than half of the world’s population as well as being important in science as a model plant of monocots. Since the release of whole genome sequences of the rice reference genome, O. sativa spp. japonica cv. Nipponbare and release of a set of genome-wide simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers and large numbers of rice T-DNA/transposon tagging lines in early 2000’s, genomics and genetics of rice have been remarkably advanced. In addition, next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies with bioinformatics produced a huge amount of sequence information from diverse germplasm, including cultivars, landraces, and wild rice species. NGS techniques and advanced high-throughput genotyping technologies enabled genome-wide association study (GWAS) for rapid identification of novel genes associated with the phenotypes. Recently, new genome engineering tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 and sequence-specific DNA binding protein-based nuclease are well adapted in rice for functional study and direct trait improvement of rice. As a consequence, for the last two decades rice research has been remarkable in terms of many scientific aspects including completion of high quality reference genomes sequences, gene identification, gene functional studies, DNA mark technologies, marker-assisted breeding, and genome engineering.

Despite the tremendous achievements in rice science using advanced resources and technologies, their contributions to rice crop improvement are not highly correlated and there are still big gaps between rice science and rice crop improvement. To date, more than 2,800 genes out of the 39,045 annotated protein-coding genes in rice genome are functionally characterized and some portions of them are well studied at the molecular mechanisms level. However, the identified genes controlling useful agronomic traits are fewer, and the favorable alleles of the genes are already present in many elite rice cultivars, making them inapplicable for breeding modern elite varieties. Most of all, the products of genomics and genetics were not well extended to rice crop improvement.   

Therefore, this Special Issue will focus on rice crop improvement by genomics, genetics, and breeding and related topics (original research papers, perspectives, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches and methods) covering genes/QTLs, novel/superior alleles, grain yield, grain quality and nutrition, biotic/abiotic stress, current and emerging problems (direct seeding, rice cultivation in harsh environments such as saline area and iron/aluminum toxicity soils, and mitigation of methane gas emission in rice field), hybrid rice, utilization of wild rice species, genome engineering, and breeding scheme/strategies are most welcome.

Dr. Sung-Ryul Kim
Dr. Chih-Wei Tung
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.