Despite rice being one of the most produced crops for the world's population, it is not grown often in high yields because obtaining or reproducing seeds on your own is expensive. A new solution has come to light in two genes in rice egg cells that activate embryo development without any fertilization. This was discovered by researchers from University of California's Davis and Berkely campuses and the solution would create highly efficient and high yielding clonal strains of rice and potentially other crops.
The researchers had known that activating a gene called BBM1 in rice egg cells activates the ability of a fertilized egg to form an embryo, but alone this only worked around 30% of the time. What they now discovered is the second gene WOX9A which when simultaneously activated can boost success rates to about 90%. This new discovery can allow for an easy cloning method which can increase rice production rates and lower costs.
I am hopeful for this discovery because it is potentially an inexpensive method for mass production of one of the most popular crops in history. Rice is a staple of agriculture already but with this new discovery it is possible that the amount of food in the world will increase and allow for struggling populations to get easy access to food.
Links:
https://www.britannica.com/plant/rice
https://phys.org/news/2024-11-biologists-genes-trigger-embryo-formation.html
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