Abellera, Kobe Conrad R.

2014
CRSC 1 U 1L

November 24,

Exercise 9 Crop Breeding

NARRATIVE REPORT Rice Breeding

The advancement in science and technology has been pronounced in this era
of agriculture yet rice production continues to dwindle as the rice-dependent
populations continue to increase. Thus, the integration of new techniques and
technologies must be considered in order to improve current commercially-available
rice varieties and come up with a new variety that surpasses traditional varieties,
that is, the hybrid rice. Hybrid rice is the first generation (F1) crop grown from the
cross of two distantly related rice varieties. Hybrid rice follows the phenomenon
called hybrid vigor or heterosis where the hybrid rice plant is more superior to any
trait of its parents. Due to hybrid vigor, hybrid rice has 15-30% yield advantage over
ordinary rice varieties.
We were introduced on how to conduct emasculation (part of the rice varietal
development process) of the rice florets. The guide had told us that before we start
the rice varietal development program, we must first set our objectives and goals
that tackle the positive traits we want on our rice variety to be developed. When we
were asked about the traits, some of us suggested to come up with drought-tolerant
rice while the others wanted to have a pest resistant rice variety. In response to this,
the guide had told us that we can actually develop a variety that possesses a
combination of two or more positive traits. After setting the goals and objectives,
the guide proceeded to discuss about the assembly and evaluation of parents with
known characteristics. Based on the objectives, we were told that we must locate
the parents that possess the characteristics and only then we could proceed to
emasculation. Why is it needed to emasculate a rice floret/spikelet? Considering the
anatomy, rice is a self-pollinating plant, possessing a perfect flower (also called
floret/spikelet) with six anthers (male reproductive organ) and a pair of stigma
(female reproductive organ) arising from panicles. In addition, both reproductive
organs mature at the same time and pollination occurs before rice flower opens
favoring self-pollination. The guide pointed out that in order to develop a new
variety, we have to cross one male and female parent. Since the floret of rice is a
complete flower, emasculation is necessary to come up with a male and a female
parent. Emasculation is the process of removal of the male essential parts, of a
flower or the anthers, thereby setting the flower to possess only female
reproductive organs as the term implies. The guide further stressed out that all of
the six anthers must be removed (in the case of rice) because one anther is enough
to pollinate the stigma. Moreover, emasculation must be done in the afternoon, say
1:00 or 2:00, because the rice florets bloom and release pollen grain in the morning
so it is not advisable to conduct emasculation. Aside from the time, the stage of the
parents and the proportion of exposed part of panicle must be considered as well. It
is right to perform emasculation when the rice reached heading stage wherein the
panicles start to arise from the leaf sheath and around 50% exposed. According to
the guide, it can be assumed that the florets in the exposed part of the panicle may
have been already pollinated as she pinpoints the white thread-like structures or

anthers that already released pollen grains in the demo subject. In other words, the
stigma on these parts has already pollinated. Therefore, we must select the middle
spikelets by exposing it from the leaf sheath and cut the uppermost and even the
lowermost portion. The reason why we must remove the lowermost portion is that
the spikelets are not yet mature enough so it is not needed. The guide first
demonstrated the manual method of removing the anthers. She used a pointed
scissors to diagonally cut (can be also cut horizontally) the spikelets in halves and
forceps to remove all of the exposed six anthers. The guide reminded us that the
anther color must be orange-yellow when removing it; otherwise, the whole floret is
cut. After the emasculation, the panicle of the male parent is cut and allowed to
reach the emasculated panicle, now the female parent. The guide had told us that
the male parents panicle must be shaked or in any manner that the pollen grains
would be able to reach the stigma of the emasculated panicle. She further defined
the dispersion of pollen grains and she compared it akin to dust particles in the air.
After the pollination, it must be covered with glassine bag and labelled with the
information about the date of pollination and parents. After 21 days, the formation
of seeds is anticipated to take place, however, the shape of the seed would not be
akin to butil ng bigas that we see in stores wherein the seeds are completely
elongated because the photosynthates assumed the shape of the cover of the
floret, which is cut when the emasculation process was done in our case. In simple
words, after 21 days, we anticipate to see deformed seeds. The guide told us the
the resulting seeds would be the F1 seeds. The F1 seeds must be planted and selfpollination must be allowed. The resulting offsprings would be the F2 seeds. The
guide told us that when the F2 seeds are planted and reached maturity, the
appearance of all the plants would not be uniform and that is the time we will
choose what quality we prefer the most and the seeds of the plants that possess
those qualities will be planted and grown again. The resulting seeds would be the F3
seeds. The guide emphasized that it is a continuous process of selection until we
reach the desirable quality, say F7 or F8. She further pointed out that the important
part is the selection of the best in every generation based on the formulated
criteria. Usually, the whole process (F1-F8) takes four years and may take more time
if the seeds are brought to preliminary and advance yield trials. In the trials
mentioned, we still select the best in every generation, say we choose the plants
that possess high yield capability, fragrant aroma when cooked, resistance to pests
etc. After the trials, the guide told us that we may have our rice variety entered in
NCT or National Cooperative Test wherein different breeding institutions enter their
promising lines to test in six different locations or test stations in the Philippines.
She mentioned that there is a test station in Los Baos for rice NCT. The test will be
done for three seasons: one dry season and two wet seasons. There is selection
involved again in the process and the selected lines may now enter the multilocation trials wherein the plots for planting are bigger and owned by the farmers.
The promising lines are grown in 22 locations and tested for two seasons. The lines
that will pass through are subject to deliberation by rice technical working groups or
the experts in rice and rice breeding. After the deliberation, the pool of experts will
decide on which of the entries they would recommend as a new variety. Finally, the
guide told us that NSIC or National Seed Industry Council will take the final verdict.
Once it is approved by NSIC, the promising line is now a new variety and will be
commercially available to farmers.
Reference:

David, C.C. 2007. The Philippine Hybrid Rice Program: A Case for Redesign and
Scaling Down. Philippine
Institute for Development Studies. Retrieved November 22, 2014 from
http://dirp4.pids.gov.ph/ris/rps/pidsrp0603.pdf
ANSWERS TO STUDY QUESTIONS:
1. Identify three biotechnology tools used in plant breeding. Give three examples of
commercially available plants that used new biotechnology tools.

Tissue culture and micropropagation

Tissue culture is the cultivation of plant cells, tissues, or organs on specially
formulated nutrient media. Micropropagation is a tissue culture method
developed for the production of disease-free, high quality planting material
and for rapid production of many uniform plants.
Molecular breeding or marker assisted selection
MAS or Marker assisted selection is the use of molecular markers which are
short strings or sequence of nucleic acid which makes up a segment of DNA.
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering allows the direct transfer of one or just a few genes,
between either
closely or distantly related organisms.
Plants that used new biotechnology tools:
Rice
Corn
Eggplant

2. Define genetically engineered plants. List down five reasons why genetic
engineering is used in plants?

Genetically engineered plants are plants whose genetic characteristics have

been altered using recombinant DNA technology
involves the use of
laboratory tools and specific enzymes to cut out, insert, and alter pieces of
DNA that contain one or more genes of interest.
Five reasons why genetic engineering is used in plants:
1. The trait to be introduced is not present in the germplasm of the crop.
2. The trait is very difficult to improve by conventional breeding methods.
3. It will take a very long time to introduce and/or improve such trait in the
crop by means of conventional breeding.
4. When all of the other techniques have been exhausted.
5. Reduce reliance on wide application of pesticides.
3. What are GMOs?
GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are plants or animals that have
been genetically engineered with DNA from other sources which cannot occur
in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.
Organisms that possess improved character as a result of expression of the
transgene(s).

Reference:
Agricultural Biotechnology (A Lot More than Just GM Crops). Retrieved November
22, 2014 from
http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/agricultural_biotechnology/download
/agricultural_biotechnology.pdf