The researchers are experimenting with rice plants with climate-resilient gene variants in special “growth rooms” at the university’s Sutton Bonington campus.<\/p>\n
Professor Ranjan Swarup said the rooms allowed them to simulate conditions and see how different plants responded to heat stress and drought.<\/p>\n
“In this day and age, when global food security is a big issue facing world agriculture and we have to improve food production in a sustainable way, we are looking at root traits which can improve resilience,” he said.<\/p>\n
The rice plants are also analysed in a micro-CT scanner at the university’s Hounsfield Facility.<\/p>\n
Hounsfield director Professor Craig Sturrock said it allowed researchers to visualise how roots responded to changes in climate without damaging them.<\/p>\n
“There might be a deeper, steeper root angle that gives that plant a benefit to capture more water that’s deeper into the soil profile, and we can then identify which gene controls that and use it in a breeding programme,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Nottingham team has been working with other scientists and rice breeders at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).<\/p>\n
Plants with the identified gene variants are due to be tested under “field conditions” for three years in the Philippines, where the IRRI is based.<\/p>\n
“We’re working with them to measure the right things so we can understand the biological origins of heat stress tolerance and drought tolerance,” Murchie said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The researchers are experimenting with rice plants with climate-resilient gene variants in special “growth rooms” at the university’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-594279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}