Research Projects

Rice is an important staple food for more than half of the world's population. Many cultivars of rice are being cultivated throughout the world to date. Black rice is one of the coloured varieties which have a high anthocyanin content in the pericarp layers, which gives it a dark purple colour. Anthocyanin, a group of pigments belonging to the flavonoid family, is regarded as a good source of antioxidants. Production of the crop with nutraceuticals value should be significantly increased but sustainably to meet the growing challenges arising from the rapid population growth, economic growth, and global climate changes. A notable contribution towards achieving this goal is the integration of knowledge and advances in plant physiology, genetics, biotechnology, and genomic research. One challenge in this field of modern crop improvement is that the presence of one desirable trait in a new crop variety is associated with the impairment of one or more other beneficial characteristics. The discovery of genetic modulators is therefore an essential step for manipulating important agronomic traits efficiently and accurately. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous single-stranded non-coding RNA molecules of approximately 22 nucleotides in length and are previously unrecognized layer of gene regulatory molecules that bind to partially complementary sequences in target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). MiRNAs have been demonstrated to play versatile roles in almost all aspects of the intracellular processes in plants including regulating diverse important agronomic traits in crops. So far over 700 miRNAs associated with rice have been reported. Few of these miRNAs have been experimentally verified to have relationships with important agronomic traits in rice. For instance, osa-miR156 could serve as a potential tool for modifying rice plant architecture by regulating the strigolactones signaling pathway; overexpression of osa-miR156 produced a bushy phenotype with increased tiller number, reduced plant height, prolonged heading date, low seed setting, and small panicle size but the ectopic expression of this miRNA under OsTB1 promoter significantly improved the grain yield per plant. The black scented rice, locally known as Chakhao in Manipur, is best known for its deep purple colour, glutinous texture, unique flavour, and special aroma. Manipur’s black scented rice has been granted the Geographical Indication (GI) tag (GI Reg No. 602) in India for the protection of its identity. Few important agronomic traits present in Chakhao are the rich anthocyanin and polyphenolic content which render its antioxidant properties. This project is an attempt to identify novel miRNAs in the Chakhao landrace and their characterization, and exploration of their expression profiles. Special emphasis will be given to the miRNAs that play the regulatory roles in biosynthesis and accumulation of anthocyanin.