Biology of rice

The aim of our research is the selection of new rice cultivars with desirable and improved agronomic traits, attending the requirements of rice breeders. The objective is to facilitate and to reduce the cost of the agricultural techniques and improve yield potential. The growth and productivity of the different cultivars vary enormously depending on the weather and the culturing practices, and every geographic region has developed its own breeding programs that have led to varieties with characteristics well adapted to each local area.

Our main objective is to study the incorporation of these desirable and improved agronomic traits in the rice crops without reducing productivity, using a functional genomics approach. For example, the height and stiffness of the stem are important traits to prevent shoot lodging and to facilitate the collection of the grain. The identification of specific genes involved in biological processes that affect such traits, should be extraordinarily useful for the modification in a selective way of the traits of interest.

Among our research objectives, we are looking for rice genes involved in height, stem strength or tillering, by searching for the homologs of the Arabidopsis genes dwf5, dfl1, and ext12. We will study the function of these genes in rice, as well as the effect of their overexpression.

A second objective is to obtain transgenic plants with improved agronomic traits, by transforming rice with genes of interest regulated by the 35S, OsGRP1 and actin promoters. We intend to produce plants resistant to lodging, as well as shorter and more robust plants.