Marker-assisted Selection to Develop Low Lignin-whole Crop Silage Rice for the Improvements of Forage Digestibility

When developing new rice varieties for feed, the main goals are to enhance biomass production and lodging resistance as well as to improve feed digestibility. And so lignin modification has been a breeding target for the improvements of forage digestibility and fermentation in whole crop silage(WCS) rice. In rice, gold hull and internode 2 (gh2) was identified as a lignin-deficient mutant. gh2 exhibits a reddish-brown pigmentation in the hull and the internode is located on the short arm of chromosome 2 and codes for cinnamyl-alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD). We are now introgressing CAD and selecting a high-biomass and low-lignin WCS lines for developing WCS rice variety improved digestibility.