“Chinese researchers have developed a revolutionary form of hybrid rice that can replicate itself through seeds that are clones, faithfully preserving high-yield traits generation after generation…

The price of hybrid seeds can reach 200 yuan (US$28) per kilogram in China, and even higher in other countries – up to 100 times more than that of regular rice seeds.

Moreover, the offspring of these high-priced seeds lose their hybrid vigour – superior traits from crossbreeding – forcing farmers to buy seeds again every year.

A research team led by Wang Kejian at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ China National Rice Research Institute has developed hybrid rice capable of near-perfect clonal reproduction through apomixis – a process in which seeds develop without fertilisation.

The team’s work, which is pending peer review, was published on the preprint server bioRxiv on October 17 under the title ‘Fixing Hybrid Rice: >99% Efficient Apomixis with Near-Normal Seed Set.’

Its new Fix8 series achieves more than 99.7 per cent cloning efficiency with seed-setting rates rivalling conventional hybrids, effectively creating self-replicating super rice.”

From South China Morning Post.