Thermotolerance for yield and quality in rice: a novel NF-Ys-QT12 gene system

With the increase in global temperatures, heat stress damaged the yield as well as grain quality of many cereal crops. Enhancing high temperature resistance in cereals have been remained a long sought objective. Li et al. recently published their breakthrough work in cell journal which identified a first grain yield quality thermotolerance negative regulating gene QT12 in rice. Targeting this locus either thorough genome editing or introgression of its natural variant by breeding lowers its expression and preserves both yield and quality, when temperature rises. It breaks the crop breeding bottleneck of yield-quality trade-off effect. The impact of this gene may be even broader than rice in introducing thermotolerance in other cereals which are facing the similar problems. Study provides powerful resource for thermostable cereals breeding and sustainable agriculture.