Biotechnology for rice grain quality improvement

Omics technologies including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have been widely used to comprehend the mechanisms underlying rice grain filling, seed development, and grain quality formation. With increasing markers available to tag grain quality related traits, molecular breeding has been popularly used in rice breeding to improve rice grain quality and yield. Transgenic breeding can confer rice with additional traits that are not present in rice germplasm, which has brought about some successful examples, such as transgenic rice lines that accumulate vitamin A, folates, and anthocyanin in the rice endosperm. CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing system has made rice breeding enter into the era of precision mutation breeding. This chapter summarizes the integration of knowledge from omics-based research on seed development and grain quality formation as well as grain quality improvement brought about by molecular breeding.