About this Research Topic
Rice is one of the most widely consumed cereal both in developing and developed countries with the third-highest worldwide production. Rice production is constantly subject to multiple environmental stresses, both biotic and abiotic. In addition, the effect of such stresses can change in response to environmental conditions. The increasing global food demand, together with rapid population growth forces rice geneticists and breeders to speed up and push forward the improvement of resistance and/or avoidance to such stresses as well as productivity.
To achieve this complex task, the use of distant relatives of rice as donor of genetic diversity has been attempted to improve the resistance together with productivity in rice varieties, because of the limited genetic variation within current rice varieties. However, reproductive barriers, which appears in prezygotic and/or postzygotic phases, are often observed in interspecific or intersubspecific crosses and prevent the introgression of useful genes. Therefore, reproductive barriers and gene introgression are a major concern for rice breeding, but also in the field of rice biology for evolutionary and developmental aspects.
In the last few decades, many progresses have been made in these research areas, especially in mapping genes associated with reproductive isolation and resistance to environmental stresses. This Research Topic is meant to gather together all the current knowledge in this field and share it with scientific community to speed up the rice genetic improvement.
Our primary focuses of this Research Topic are, but not limited to, the following subjects:
- Variation of morphology, physiology, and genome among rice species
- Genetic and genomic resources in rice studies
- Distribution of reproductive barriers in rice species
- Genetics and genomics of rice reproductive barriers
- Evolutionary and developmental biology of rice reproductive barriers
- Establishment of introgression lines derived from interspecific or intersubspecific cross for gene mapping and functional genomics
- Successful use of introgression line in breeding or variety in commercial cultivation.
Keywords: Breeding; evolutionary biology; genetic resource; genome variation hybridization, introgression, reproductive barriers
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
