Russian scientists find new method to create high-yield rice varieties

Photo caption — Illustration photo: Thu Hien/VNA

How is the rice of the future created?

As explained by experts from RSF, the genetic code of plants is filled with repeating DNA segments that can be located consecutively or scattered throughout the genome.

Transposable genes, also known as “jumping genes,” influence the activity of other genes and play an important role in plant evolution, their resistance to disease and adverse environmental conditions. Embedding genes from other organisms into them is a promising direction for creating new crop varieties.

During the plant's life cycle, "jumping genes" change so much (mutate) that existing computer programs no longer see them, hindering further editing.

To overcome this difficulty, scientists from the Federal Research Center for Biotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences have developed an approach that uses gradually refined mathematical tables, comparing them with real DNA sections.

The authors of the study confirm that, unlike traditional approaches, their new method is capable of detecting even mutated repeats.

After analyzing the rice (Oryza sativa) genome using the new algorithm, they identified 992,739 repeats belonging to 79 different families. This is 56% more than the number of repeats identified by the EDTA algorithm, which is widely used by biologists. At the same time, the repeats account for 66% of the entire rice genome, also exceeding previous estimates.

Important tasks and broad prospects

"Rice is the main food product, serving the needs of more than 1 billion people. Therefore, there is an important task to develop new high-yielding varieties of this crop," said Evgeny Korotkov, head of the group of mathematical analysis of DNA and protein sequences at the Federal Research Center for Biotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His comments were quoted in a statement by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

According to Mr. Korotkov, to solve the problem of developing new rice varieties, it is necessary to understand the structure of the rice genome and find all the mobile genetic elements in it. The team of experts of the Federal Research Center for Biotechnology has discovered a large number of previously undiscovered sequences, which helps to find successful points for integrating other plant genes into the rice genome and creating new rice varieties.

In the future, the scientists plan to apply this approach to other agricultural crops, as well as try to refine the method to make it even more sensitive. Their plans include creating a database of the distributed repeats found in different crops, which will be open to the international scientific community and used for further experimental studies.

The results of the research, funded by the Russian Science Foundation, were published in the journal Rice Science.

Source: https://doanhnghiepvn.vn/cong-nghe/cac-nha-khoa-hoc-lien-bang-nga-tim-ra-phuong-phap-moi-tao-giong-lua-nang-suat-cao/20250716085632665