Introduction

　　Dr. Qian Qian, Principal Investigator, chief scientist of Super Rice Germplasm Innovation Group, was awarded National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and Young and Middle-aged Outstanding Contribution Scientists in Ministry of Agriculture. He and collaborators were awarded the First Prize of National Natural Science 2017. He is focusing on rice germplasm resources, including breeding super rice germplasm. His research achievements were published on high profile journals including Nature Genetics, Nature Plants and Molecular Plant and so on.

　　Research Interest

　　Our research concerns the rice germplasm resources, including creating various genetic materials of rice and constructing elite rice germplasm resources, identifying key genes controlling the important agronomic traits of rice, and breeding of super hybrid rice varieties by molecular design.

　　Major Achievements

　　We created a new rice germplasm, Xiaowei, which could be used for establishing an ideal indoor research system for rice research.

　　We revealed the functional mechanism of GL7, a grain length controlling gene. Tandem duplication of a 17.1-kb segment at the GL7 locus leads to upregulation of GL7 and downregulation of its nearby negative regulator, resulting in an increase in grain length and improvement of grain appearance quality.

　　We developed super-rice varieties with both high yield and superior quality by crossing Teqing with both Nipponbare, which is a variety with superior eating and cooking quality but a low yield, and 93-11, which is a variety with excellent appearance quality.

　　Selected Publication

　　1. Liu CL, Gao ZY, Shang LG, Yang CH, Ruan BP, Zeng DL, Guo LB, Zhao FJ, Huang CF, Qian Q. (2019). Natural variation in the promoter of OsHMA3 contributes to differential grain cadmium accumulation between Indica and Japonica rice. Journal of integrative plant biology.

　　2. Zhang B, Shang LG, Ruan BP, Zhang AP, Yang SL, Jiang HZ, Liu CL, Hong K, Lin H, Gao ZY, Hu J, Zeng DL, Guo LB, Qian Q. (2019). Development of Three Sets of High-Throughput Genotyped Rice Chromosome Segment Substitution Lines and QTL Mapping for Eleven Traits. Rice, 12(1), 33.

　　3. Hu SK, Hu XM, Hu J, Shang LG, Dong GJ, Zeng DL, Guo LB, Qian Q① (2018). Xiaowei, A New Rice Germplasm for Large-Scale Indoor Research. Molecular Plant. 11(11): 1418-1420.

　　4. Su Y, Hu SK, Zhang B, Ye WJ, Niu YF, Guo LB①, Qian Q① (2017). Characterization and fine mapping of a new early leaf senescence mutant es3(t), in rice. Plant Growth Regulation, 81(3): 419-431.

　　5. Zeng DL, Tian ZX, Rao YC, Dong GJ, Yang YL, Huang LC, Leng YJ, Xu J, Sun C, Zhang GH, Hu J, Zhu L, Gao ZY, Hu XM, Guo LB, Xiong GS, Wang YH, Li JY, Qian Q① (2017). Rational design of high-yield and superior-quality rice. Nature Plants, 3(4): 17031.

　　6. Qian Q, Guo LB, Steven MS①, Li JY① (2016). Breeding high-yield superior quality hybrid super rice by rational design. National Science Review, 3(3): 283-294.

　　7. Hu J, Wang XY, Fang YX, Zeng LJ, Xu J, Yu HP, Shi ZY, Pan JJ, Zhang D, Kang SJ, Zhu L, Dong GJ, Guo LB, Zeng DL, Zhang GH, Xie LH, Xiong GS, Li jy , Qian Q① (2015). A Rare Allele of GS2 Enhances Grain Size and Grain Yield in Rice. Molecular Plant 8(10): 1455-1465.

　　8. Wang YX, Xiong GS, Hu J, Jiang L , Yu H, Xu J, Fang YX, Zeng LJ, Xu EB, Xu EB, Ye WJ, Meng XB, Liu RF, Chen HQ, Jing YH, Wang YH, Zhu XD① , Li JY①, Qian Q① (2015) Copy number variation at the GL7 locus contributes to grain size diversity in rice. Nature Genetics, 47(8): 944.