On July 7, a joint research group of Akita Prefectural University, University of Tsukuba and the Agricultural and Food Industry Research Organization announced that it had succeeded in developing rice that can significantly reduce the absorption of cesium.
Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, it has been a challenge to prevent crops from absorbing radioactive cesium.Potassium is similar in nature to cesium.For this reason, it has been thought that plants absorb cesium through the potassium transport route.However, potassium has many absorption routes, and it was not known by which route cesium was absorbed.
This time, the research group cultivated nearly 10,000 non-GMO rice variants.As a result, we discovered the existence of an individual that does not absorb cesium.Analysis of this individual revealed that OsHAK1, one of the potassium transporters, is the main absorption pathway, and the other pathways are rarely used.
And it turned out that rice that lost this function would not absorb cesium significantly.Furthermore, as a result of a cultivation test of brown rice in a field, it was proved that the concentration of radioactive cesium could be significantly reduced to 10% or less of that of the parent variety (Akitakomachi).It is expected that it will be used as a measure to suppress the absorption of radioactive cesium into rice in the future.
Paper information:[Plant and Cell Physiology] Caesium uptake by rice roots largely depends upon a single gene, HAK1, which encodes a potassium transporter
