Studies on Aroma Gene and its Application in Rice Genetics and Breeding

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most important food crops in the world, and the staple food for more than half of the world’s population. Along with the sustained development of living standards, people’s demand for high quality rice is increasing. As one of the types of cultivated rice, aromaticrice is preferred by most of the consumers because of its agreeable scent. With the rapid development of rice functional genomics and sequencing technology, great progress has been made in understanding the aroma gene in rice, and a series of functional markers has been developed for screening the aroma gene and breeding new rice varieties in recent years. This paper mainly reviews the progress in the genetic basis, gene function and regulation of the aroma gene, and the application of aroma gene functional markers in the genetic improvement and breeding of aromaticrice. Thus, it provides important references for the cultivation of new varieties of aromaticrice.