Tety Maryenti graduate student at Tokyo Metropolitan University Graduate School, Professor Ryushi Okamoto, and Lecturer Takayoshi Ishii at Tottori University overcame the insufficiency of wheat-rice crossing and succeeded in producing the world's first wheat-rice crossing plant.This is a major step toward mutual utilization of genetic resources of wheat and rice.
Wheat and rice are the major crops in the world, but they could not be crossed because they belong to different subfamilies even if they belong to the same grass family, and their excellent genetic resources could not be used mutually.Due to recent climate change and population growth, human food production is facing a crisis, and it has been required to establish a new technology for producing hybrid plants.
The method of isolating egg cells and sperm cells from the flower organs of a plant and electrically fusing their gametes to produce a fertilized egg is called the microinsemination (IVF) method.In this study, this IVF method was used to fuse gametes (egg cells and sperm cells) isolated from wheat and rice flowers in various combinations to produce a variety of wheat-rice hybrid fertilized eggs.By analyzing their developmental process, we identified wheat-rice hybrid fertilized eggs that develop and redifferentiate into hybrid plants, and found a combination of wheat and rice gametes to overcome hybrid insufficiency.
The IVF method of heterologous gametes established in this study has made it possible to create hybrids of wheat and rice, which was not possible until now.This will enable mutual use of the genetic resources of wheat and rice, and is expected to produce new crops with new excellent traits.Furthermore, it is possible to produce distant hybrid plants among many useful plants such as corn, barley, and sugar cane.
Paper information:[New Phytologist] Development and regeneration of wheat–rice hybrid zygotes produced by in vitro fertilization system
