Conservation of Rice Genetic Resources for Food Security.
This is one major contributory role of PhilRice’s Genetic Resources Division to any rice varietal improvement program in the Philippines. The division, among its other research activities, maintains the PhilRice Gene bank, a national repository of rice genetic materials consisting of traditional landraces, improved rice varieties, research/breeding lines, materials generated from molecular methods, interspecific hybrids, and foreign accessions among others.
Rice farmers have continually contributed to rice diversity as they cultivated selected and nurtured thousands of rice cultivars throughout time. These cultivars represent a vast wealth of genetic material, composed of landraces and traditional varieties, which are good sources of important morphological and physiological traits crucial to breeding improved rice varieties. These rice genetic resources are key components to breeding programs and serve as sources of important traits in developing better rice cultivars.
In rice breeding history, several studies have identified rice landraces as parent lines of promising new varieties. Notable of these reports are the development of IR8, and discovery of genes for submergence tolerance, and increasing rice yield. Tropical Japonica rice landrace Daringan expresses the NAL1 allele responsible for significantly increasing the yield of modern rice varieties. Rice farmers have continually contributed to rice diversity as they cultivated selected and nurtured thousands of rice cultivars throughout time. This is one major contributory role of PhilRice’s Genetic Resources Division to any rice varietal improvement program in the Philippines.
Adv Food Technol Nutr Sci Open J. 2015; SE(1):S51-S56. doi: 10.17140/AFTNSOJ-SE-1-108
