A multiple harvest! Chinese scientists cultivated perennial "longevity rice"

Rice cultivation is one of the most important annual cereal crops worldwide. However, its ancestor, wild rice, is a perennial, creeping grass-like plant. How wild rice gradually evolved into the annual cultivated rice during domestication has long been a mystery.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science, led by Academician Han Bin and Researcher Wang Jiawei, have, after years of research, cloned the key gene EBT1 that determines the perennial life habit of wild rice and clarified why rice shifted from perennial to annual during domestication. This achievement was published on March 20 in the international journal Science as a cover story.

In this study, the team systematically examined 446 wild rice resources and constructed chromosome substitution lines by crossing the perennial Dongxiang wild rice W1943 with the annual cultivated rice Guangluai-4, a indica variety, and conducted forward genetic studies. Using fine mapping and cloning techniques, they ultimately identified and cloned the gene, naming it EBT1.

△Chinese scientists cultivated perennial “long-lived rice”

The researchers found that in the pursuit of high yield and compact plant architecture, people may have inadvertently “discarded” the perennial genes of wild rice. Based on this, the team combined EBT1 with two known creeping rice genes to successfully create “semi-wild rice” plants that can reproduce the wild grass phenotype. These plants have strong asexual reproductive ability and can survive for at least two years in field conditions in Hainan.

This research not only deepens our understanding of the evolution of plant life history strategies but also provides important theoretical basis and genetic resources for the perennialization and regeneration breeding of rice varieties.