Breeding a High-quality, Disease-resistant Rice, Funong You 404

  Objective  To fully utilize existing glabrous rice resources, build superb rice restorer lines, and breed new high-quality, disease resistant varieties of rice.

  Method  Hybridization using the glabrous Australia-112 as the female parent and the blast-resistant restorer line Minghui 77 as the male parent was conducted. After pedigree selection with blast resistance confirmation, the rice cultivar HN476 was chosen to cross with the sterile line Funong A to arrive at a new restorer line Quanhui 404. The combination of Quanhui 404 and Funong A, Funong You 404 were subjected to multipoint variety comparative tests in 2016-2017 at Hui’an and Dehua counties in Fujian as well as at Sanya in Hainan. It performed well with high yield and rice blast-resistance at the Regional Trials of Seed Enterprises Consortium on Mid-season Rice Varieties in Sanming City in 2018 prior to entering trials and production tests in 2019 and 2020.

  Result  The mean yield of the newly bred Funong You 404 was 8 721.75 kg·hm⁻² at the regional trials in two consecutive years which was 1.96% higher than that of the reference variety, II You 3301. Overall, it exhibited high and stable yield, moderate resistance to blast, the grade-3 edible rice variety grain quality standard set forth by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the certificate issued by the Crop Variety Approval Committee of Fujian in 2021.

  Conclusion  Funong You 404, the new 3-line hybrid rice variety, was characterized by high yield, desirable grain quality, and blast resistance. It was considered suitable for mid-season rice cultivation in Fujian.