Genetics and Breeding of Low-Temperature Stress Tolerance in Rice
AbstractLow-temperature stress (LTS) is one of the major abiotic stresses that affect crop growth and ultimately decrease grain yield. The development of rice varieties with low-temperature stress tolerance has been a severe challenge for rice breeders for a long time. The lack of consistency of the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) governing LTS tolerance for any given growth stage over different genetic backgrounds of mapping populations under different low-temperature stress conditions remains a crucial barrier for adopting marker-assisted selection (MAS). In this review, we discuss the ideal location and phenotyping for agromorphological and physiological parameters as indicators for LTS tolerance and also the traits associated with QTLs that were identified from biparental mapping populations and diverse rice accessions. We highlight the progress made in the fields of genome editing, genetic transformation, transcriptomics, and metabolomics to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of cold tolerance in rice. The stage-specific QTLs and candidate genes for LTS tolerance brought out valuable information toward identifying and improving LTS tolerance in rice varieties. We showed 578 QTLs and 38 functionally characterized genes involved in LTS tolerance. Among these, 29 QTLs were found to be colocalized at different growth stages of rice. The combination of stage-specific QTLs and genes from biparental mapping populations and genome-wide association studies provide potential information for developing LTS-tolerant rice varieties. The identified colocalized stage-specific LTS-tolerance QTLs will be useful for MAS and QTL pyramiding and for accelerating mapping and cloning of the possible candidate genes, revealing the underlying LTS-tolerance mechanisms in rice.