Natural Variation in Ghd7.1 Plays Important Roles in Grain Yield and Adaptation in Rice

Plant adaptation, which is mainly regulated by both genetic factors and environmental factors, determines its growth regions and growth seasons. With map base cloning we identified a pleiotropic gene Ghd7.1 which delays rice heading date for 19.5 days and enhances grain productivity more than 60% under long days condition. Analysed the sequences of 178 rice varieties we detected twenty-four haplotypes. Farther analysed the distribution of the 178 varieties we found that non-function haplotypes mainly grown in Central to the Northern China and double cropping rice regions, whereas the function haplotypes mainly distributed in Central to the Southern China. Ghd7.1 plays an important role in rice adaptation. This adaptation was affirmed by 1479 rice accessions in addition. Ghd7.1 was an important gene in rice adaptation and yield increase.