Improving rice to meet food and nutritional needs: biotechnological approaches

Abstract

The livelihood and calorie needs of large populations based in developing countries is dependent on rice cultivation. More than three billion people consume rice as a staple food. To meet the future demands of the human population, innovative tools such as genomics are being used to improve rice yield increase, for the incorporation of stress resistance/tolerance in rice varieties, and for the improvement of the nutritional quality of rice. These new tools include: sequencing, large-scale analysis of expressed sequence tags, high throughout microarray analysis and genetic transformation. Rice now serves as a model for a science based crop design for the agronomic, nutritional, and economic benefit of farmers. This article discusses the use of biotechnology as a tool to improve the rice plant for the benefit of mankind.