New explanations for yield variation in biofortified rice

When we cross biofortified rice to conventional rice we often see large yield variation in the resulting progeny. What accounts for this variation? In this study we used a distance-based linear model (DistLM) to identify plant tissue nutrient predictors accounting for agro-morphological variation in high-yielding and low-yielding progeny of biofortified rice. The results show that low-yielding progeny often have overaccumulation of grain-zinc and/or panicle-magnesium, while these two traits do not appear in high-yielding progeny. By selecting against these overaccumulation traits we can rapidly produce high-yielding varieties of iron and zinc biofortified rice.

To learn more read the full paper here:

Moreno-Moyano LT, Bonneau JP, Sánchez-Palacios JT, Tohme J and Johnson AAT (2016) Association of increased grain iron and zinc concentrations with agro-morphological traits of biofortified rice. Frontiers in Plant Science 7: 1463. PDF