Book with abstracts from the COST Action 0905 meeting in ... - UMB

RICE QUALITY AND NUTRITIONAL VALUE AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
Elisabetta Lupotto 1 , Anna Benedetti 1 , Gianattilio Sacchi 2
1 CRA – Consiglio per la Ricerca e la sperimentazione in Agricoltura, Milan, Italy
2 Università degli studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
Italy is the first European rice producer, with more than 50% of the total paddy production.
Increased productivity and quality stability, resistance to actual and emerging diseases,
resistance to old and new environmental constraints such as cold, drought stress and salty soils
are major requirements to provide Italian rice production chain to sustain competitiveness at
the international level. Industry and consumers’ request are driven by market, tradition, and
well recognized search for quality. Farmers need new and more competitive varieties, adapted
to the market’s request and tailored to sustain economically profitable cultivation joined to an
environmentally friendly agrosystem: the actual rice production chain does not completely
meets such requests important traits and associated mechanisms conferring élite characters to
the plant.
A strong agriculture is vital for the EU food industry and global food security. The pressure on
agricultural income is expected to continue as farmers are facing more risks, a slowdown in
productivity, and rising input prices: these considerations are even more important for rice
growers, being related to a well defined area almost completely devoted to paddy fields in a
territory bound to the specific crop since centuries. It is therefore a major need to maintain
income support and to reinforce instruments to better manage risks and respond to crisis
situations. At the same time, agriculture and rural areas are being called upon to step up their
efforts to meet the ambitious climate and energy targets and biodiversity strategy that are part
of the Europe 2020 agenda. It has to be underlined that paddy fields are also one of the
greenhouse gases producing areas, due to the type of the agrosystem adopted in anaerobic
conditions. Farmers will need to be supported in adopting and maintaining farming systems
and practices that are particularly favourable to environmental and climate objectives in order
to operate in accordance to policy of strategic importance for food security, the environment
and territorial balance.
Rice is not only one of the most important cereal species, but it is the model cereal species,
with its genome completely sequenced and deciphered; indica and japonica varieties have
been subjected to genome sequence thus offering the possibility to get information in wide
genomic database. The completion of the accurate, map-based rice genome sequence in 2004
was a significant milestone for rice research. This indispensable tool has already helped rice
researchers to identify the genes that are responsible for many important traits associated with
rice growth and development. Currently, in addition to genomics, several new fields of study
or the so-called “-omics” address various aspects associated with the genome including
transcripts, proteins, and metabolites. Using the information revealed by the sequencing of the
rice genome, techniques such as marker-assisted selection allow new varieties to be bred in a
fraction of the time required as recently as 20 years ago. Considerable progress has been made
in understanding the structure of the rice grain and its composition. Identification of genotypic
differences in structure and nutrient composition and knowledge of the impact of pre- and
postharvest factors on them are essential. Such knowledge will enable the development of