Overcoming self-incompatibility and inbreeding depression in diploid potato provides theoretical basis for diploid potato breeding and the reference for deciphering the inbreeding depression in other species, which promotes the process of potato as staple food. The work successfully obtained clonal seeds, established the apomixis strategy in hybrid rice and opened up a new direction for the research of fixing heterosis and crop breeding.

Fixation of rice heterozygosity by multiplex gene editing in hybrid rice

The newly established CRISPR/Cas-mediated allele replacement system in crop plants, overcomes the obstacle in delivering sufficient donor repair template into plant cells, and provides new light on achieving precise gene replacement of an existing allele with an elite allele through genome editing to accelerate breeding process and generate novel germplasm. The findings demonstrated that two novel regulatory ncRNAs respond differently to various environmental signals and cooperatively optimize nitrogenase activity, which provides the first insight into the regulatory network underlying biological nitrogen fixation.