(Yicai Global) Aug. 7 -- A team of Chinese scientists recently discovered a gene affecting rice's ideotype, which could be crucial in breeding more productive strains of the grass species, state-owned news agency Xinhua reported.

Researchers have identified and cloned key genes affecting rice production following advances in the functional genomics of rice in recent years, but the molecular regulation mechanism for breeding ideotypes had remained unclear, showed the report, which was published last Friday in Cell Research, a journal run by the UK's Nature Publishing Group said.

The team, led by geneticists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Genetics and Development Biology and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' Rice Institute, successfully isolated and cloned a key gene, known as NPT1, which can regulate the rice ideotype and is expected to help China further increase rice yields.

"[We] didn't know which genes controlled it, and it limited applications of ideotype breeding technology, but now we know how the NPT1 gene works, breeding work will be more convenient," said Fu Xiangdong, a geneticist at the Institute of Genetics and Development Biology. "This makes it easier for us to develop high-yield rice varieties."

The team is working with breeding experts and will cultivate new breeds of high-yield rice within two to three years, and could also collaborate with international partners to bring the technology to other parts of the world.