Identification and genetic history of incompatibility loci in rice

Reproductive isolation such as by hybrid incompatibility plays a decisive role in determining gene flow among related species and is a central topic in evolutionary biology. Since the mid-1980s, agricultural yield improvement of rice has encountered a bottleneck. A key component limiting rice breeding is the strong hybrid incompatibilities between species and/or subspecies, hindering the exploitation of natural variation across larger gene pools. I propose to conduct research on hybrid incompatibility in rice, aiming to elucidate its genome-wide pattern and regulatory mechanisms within the organism to facilitate rice breeding. In this project, I plan to investigate hybrid incompatibility in rice populations using three approaches: (1) mapping incompatibility haplotypes in natural populations by leveraging historical recombination information; (2) mapping incompatibility associated with sterility within F2 populations; (3) mapping incompatibility associated with male sterility using pollen populations. The output of this research will try to break the reproductive isolation code that runs through the evolution process of rice species or subspecies, so as to overcome the hybrid sterility of rice and solve the bottleneck problem of rice yield improvement. Moreover, rice is used as a model plant to study reproductive isolation, a central topic in evolutionary biology. With this project, we expect to provide new perspectives on the speciation process and gene flow among populations.