Bridging fundamental knowledge and novel technology to increase rice heat tolerance

Seeds are the link between the end of the reproductive cycle of adult plants and the establishment of their next generation. Seeds are the means through which plants can adapt to climatic changes. Feeding the ever-growing population is a major challenge, especially in light of rapidly changing climate conditions. Genome editing is set to transform plant breeding and help secure the global food supply. Advances in genome editing technologies provide new opportunities for crop improvement by employing precision genome engineering for targeted crop traits.

This proposal, which addresses critical stages of the reproductive development, integrates several approaches to comprehensively investigate sexual reproduction in Rice under heat stress (HS) conditions with the aim of using the novel knowledge generated to improve rice production. The model plant system Arabidopsis thaliana, will be used as proof of concept, to generate quick knowledge that can be readily translated into concrete outcomes in rice, specie of high importance to the European agricultural sector.

CRISPit main goal is to understand the mechanisms that regulate heat stress tolerance during the reproductive process in rice. CRISPit will provide answers to the following questions: how plant reproductive cells and tissues are affected by heat stress? What are the molecular mechanisms underlying rice plants resilience to HS during reproduction? To answer these, CRISPit proposes to achieve three main objectives: 1) Define HS features and marker genes in Nagina22 rice variety, 2) Generate a new transcriptomic dataset 3) Obtain and fully characterize mutants from the chosen genes in order to deliver rice HS lines produced by CRISPR technology.