Reduced weed seed shattering by silencing a cultivated rice gene: strategic mitigation for escaped transgenes

Transgene flow form a genetically engineered (GE) crop to its wild relatives may result in unwanted environmental consequences. Mitigating transgenes via introducing a gene that is disadvantageous to wild relatives but beneficial to crops, and is tightly-linked with the target transgenes, may provide a promising solution to limit the spread of transgenes in wild/weedy populations. Here we demonstrate a novel system with significantly reduced seed shattering in crop-weed hybrid descendants by partially silenced expression of the seed-shattering gene SH4 in cultivated rice, using artificial microRNA and antisense RNA techniques. Accordingly, fewer seeds were found in the soil of the field plots where transgenic hybrid lineages were grown. However, no differences in productivity-related traits were detected between GE and non-GE cultivated rice. To silence seed-shattering genes provides a useful strategy to reduce the potential environmental impacts caused by transgene flow from commercial GE rice to weedy rice, in addition to the control of weedy rice.