Molecular Breeding for Improving Cold Tolerance in Rice: Recent Progress and Future Perspectives

Cold tolerance is one of the most important rice-breeding traits in rice production. It not only impacts growth region of rice varieties, but is also of great significance for ensuring safe food production throughout the world. This chapter reviews three research developments on molecular genetic studies of rice cold tolerance: (i) genomic regions associated with cold tolerance; (ii) fine mapping, cloning of major QTL loci, candidate genes underlying cold tolerance; (iii) cold regulatory pathways and tolerance mechanisms involving CBF (calmodulin-binding transcription activator), MYB (v-MYB avian myloblastosis virtual oncogene homing), transcription factors, which will provide reference for future research of rice cold molecular mechanisms.