Controlled Production of Red Pericarp & Seed Coat in Rice & Other Crop Species
- Detailed Technology Description
- The invention describes methods and compositions to producered pericarp and seed coat in rice and other crops.
- Others
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- Patent issued in the U.S. under the number 9,556,446
- Sweeney M, Thomson M, Pfeil B, McCouch S. (2006). Caught Red-Handed: Rc Encodes a Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Protein Conditioning Red Pericarp in Rice. Plant Cell 18:283-294. doi: 10.1105/tpc.105.038430.
- *Abstract
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The majority of rice crops (Oryza sativa) that are grown and consumed throughout the world arewhite-grained varieties. Consumers’interest in red or purple rice grains represents a growing specialty market inthe United States. However, red rice is consideredas a weed of rice because they can cross-pollinate with other varieties thus producesred colored grain. Weedy red rice is apersistent and problematic weed of rice culture worldwide and it is particularlydifficult to control because it shares similar genetic background with the cultivatedrice crop.
Cornell inventor has discovered novel rice alleles encoding fora protein, Rc, associated with enhancedred pigmentation in the pericarp and the seed coat. In that effort to control red ricedissemination, the present invention provides a containment method thatprevents the transfer of genes coding for weedy and wild traits.
It is therefore possible to prevent the production of wildor weedy offspring by incorporating to the genes coding for weedy and wildtraits an embryo-lethal RNAi construct under the control of a promoter, which isonly active in wild or weedy rice genotypes.
This transgene containment strategy could be implemented innumerous crop species.
PotentialApplications
- Production of red rice
- Control of weedy red rice.
Advantages
- Prevent the transfer of genes that could potentially increase the fitness of wild or weedy crop relatives
- Safeguard against the contamination of wild or weedy crop relatives that are valuable sources of germplasm for crop improvement
- Unlike other methods of transgene containment, cultivated rice plants with this construct would produce fertile seeds which could be saved and replanted.
- *Licensing
- JeffFearn607-254-4502jcf55@cornell.edu
- Country/Region
- USA
