Feeding the future: Genetic gatekeepers provide more rice grains per plant

Rice is a crucial staple food crop.Amid rising populations, limited arable land, and increasing climate uncertainty, enhancing global rice production is imperative to ensure food security.Increasing grain number per panicle through modifying regulatory pathways (WT:mutant), confirming a single recessive locus governed the observed traits.Fine 1 mapping was performed by generating additional polymorphic markers through crossing 2 WT with Toyonishiki, a parental line of Sasanishiki, which allowed the locus responsible 3 for the phenotype to be pinpointed.Using the Rice Annotation Project Database, a 4-bp 4 deletion was identified in a region previously identified as ORF4, a member of the