Rice

Thailand is the leading exporter of rice and is well known for its fragrant or jasmine varieties, popular in many countries. The premium quality variety is known as KDML 105 and Thailand already has introgression lines with submergence tolerance, bacterial leaf blight resistance, leaf blast resistance, brown plant hopper resistance, drought and salt tolerance. Future efforts will look into putting these traits together by gene pyramiding via marker-assisted selection.

Thailand is also a member of the International Collaboration for Sequencing the Rice Genome, focussing on chromosome 9, and made use of this experience and data to enhance the competitiveness of Thai rice. Improving the cooking quality, aroma, nutritional value and response to biotic and abiotic stresses are the top priorities for research.

To determine new allelic forms of valuable QTLs, critical mapping populations have been developed from the crossing between KDML 105 and landraces and wild rice. The aim of this particular project is to bring Thailand into the international scientific arena, push state-of-the-art technology into the local research and industry scene, as well as to enhance Thailand’s competitive edge in the international rice market.