Sunday, November 2
This is the second post in a series describing my trip to Bangladesh and India. For part 1 please see this post.
Our first morning in Bangladesh, we wake to the morning prayer (Bangladesh is largely a Muslim country) and the sound of birds. After breakfast, we drive 7 hours to visit the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute in Rangpur where breeders are field testing four newly developed rice varieties carrying the Submergence tolerance 1 chromosomal region.
Before I get to the results of the field trials, let me first explain why we are here and who we are. I am part of a collaborative group of scientists who developed new rice varieties for Bangladesh and India that can survive flash floods
My contribution to this work began 13 years ago when my colleague and friend Dave Mackill a breeder at IRRI (International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, Philippines) asked if I would clone a gene from a traditional variety found in the Eastern Indian state of Orissa that can survive 2 weeks of submergence. Although rice is typically cultivated in a paddy with the root system flooded, complete submergence of the plant is lethal to most varieties within a matter of days.
Using the rice populations that Dave and his group developed from the submergence tolerant variety, Postdoc Kenong Xu in my lab isolated the submergence tolerance (Sub1) locus, cloned it, sequenced it and identified an ethylene responsive transcription factor called Sub1a that is induced in response to flooding. My laboratory genetically engineering a rice variety with Sub1a and found that the transgenic plants survive 2 weeks underwater. Normally, 3 days of submergence is enough kill any rice variety.
Julia Bailey Serres (Professor, UC Riverside) joined our project in 2001 and has begun to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of action of this gene. Using the sequences we identified, Dave’s group used marker assisted breeding (a hybrid of genetic engineering and conventional breeding) to introduce Sub1 into rice varieties that are adapted to the local growing conditions in India and Bangladesh.
This work was initially supported by s NRI Plant Genome Program (1996-1999; Grant 96-35300-3723) to Mackill (PI) and Ronald (coPI) and then by a second NRI Plant Genome Program (2000-2003; Grant 00-35300-3723) to Ronald (PI) and Mackill (coPI). The recent grants from the USDA environmental stress group were awarded to Julia Bailey Serres (PI) and Pam Ronald (collaborator) from 2004-2008.
We are also joined on this trip by scientists, breeders and communication staff from the IRRI, The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) and the Central Rice Research Institute (India). Our traveling team numbers nearly 30 people. This visit wraps up an IRRI project, funded by the German government (BMZ) “From genes to Farmers fields: enhancing and stabilizing productivity of rice in submergence-prone environments”.
As biologists who research the nitty gritty of how plants endure the stress of attack from pathogens and sub-optimal growth conditions, Julia and I look forward to seeing firsthand the needs of the people of Bangladesh and hearing how the efforts of researchers at BRRI and IRRI have dramatically increased the amount of rice produced per acre each year.
In the picture to the left, Dr. Mazid (BRRI) shows the Sub1-Swarna variety on the left and the Swarna variety to the right. The results are dramatic – the Sub1 variety yielded 2-3 fold more when the field is flooded. Increased yields were observed for every Sub1-variety tested, no matter what genetic background was used (IR64, Swarna, BR11 and Samba Mashuri). In each case in the BRRI fields, the yields were similar in non-flooded conditions.
Tomorrow we will visit farmers fields to see how the rice plants behave in the farmers hands.
