Rice's Salt Tolerance Gene Cloned

摘要

In cooperation with US colleagues, CAS researchers have made significant progress in their studies into functional genes for key agronomic traits by cloning SKC1, a salt-tolerant functional gene of rice and making clear its biological functions and mechanisms. This pioneering work, which was reported in the Oct. issue of Nature Genetics (37: 1141-1146), is believed to hold promise to increase the output of the crop plant in this country. With the population explosion, socio-economic development and the changes in natural conditions, agriculture production is facing challenges from a number of unfavorable factors, such as water shortage, soil salinity and land desertification. To address the problems, stress tolerance, the ability of the crops to stand against unfavorable environmental conditions such as drought, salt, flooding or cold has become a key research issue in the world.