Rice Genetics Project By: Savannah Martinez Green B

The food I chose is… Rice Rice is a vascular plant grown in India, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Mississippi, Central Florida, Louisiana, Western Texas, Arkansas, and Northern California. Since rice is considered a vascular plant, that means the rice has two tubes. These tubes are called the xylem and phloem. The xylem transfers water up from the roots to the rest of the plant while the phloem transfers the food and nutrients throughout the plant. Rice is a staple crop for millions of people around the world. This is because rice provides us (people) with starch, minerals, vitamins, and some proteins, all of which are compounds that are essential. Though when eating rice, you do not eat the whole plant, only the endosperm of the seed that comes from the plant.

Traits In order to create a rice plant that is able to feed the world, has a high nutritional value, is resistant to drought and diseases and other stuff of that sort, you have to cross-pollinate a plant with a certain desired trait, with another plant that contains a different desired trait. Traits are inherited from the parent(s). When sexual reproduction occurs half of the traits come from both the female and male parent. To determine the phenotype (and genotype) you must look at the alleles to know what traits the offspring of the parents are going to have. Alleles are two forms of a gene. These two forms are dominant and recessive. Example: Non-resistant to disease(Dd) x Resistant (Dd) D d Dd DD Dd dd Genotype: DD ¼ Dd ½ dd ¼ Phenotype: Non-Resistant ¾ Resistant ¼ alleles Dominant trait Recessive trait The punnet square tells me that 75% of the offspring will be non-resistant to disease, while the other 25% will be resistant to disease.

Traits Continued… The traits I want my rice to have are: ▫Resistant to Drought (dd) ▫Resistant to Pest (rr) ▫High amount of Starch (QQ) ▫Large amount of Seeds (CC) -Resistant to drought because the rice would still live even with little water which is economical for the farmers. -Resistant to pest because the farmers wouldn’t have to pay for pesticide which is toxic to humans. -High amount of starch because starch is a tasteless, odorless carbohydrates found in foods, and since a carbohydrate is a complex sugars that provides energy when digested, it would be something you want in your food. -Large amount of seeds because if you have a larger amount of seeds per plant then you wouldn’t have to plant as many plants as before. To assure the rice plant would have these traits, you would use a punnet squares (shown in the previous slide). The punnet square would show you would have in a plant from cross pollinating dominant and recessive alleles.

Environmental Interactions The environment would effect the process of creating a new rice plant because there is always possibilities of droughts and diseases. Most rice plants, if not all, require lots of water. Since some farmers rely on rain to water their crops, a drought would kill the plants since they don’t have enough water to survive. Also if the plants were to catch disease, they wouldn’t last very long unless they were disease resistant. Though even if the rice plant was disease resistant, no promises could be made to tell if the plant would survive or not. Predators and other animals would effect the process of creating a new rice plant, because as the rice plant is growing the predators and other animals could come and just eat the rice, which is something that you wouldn’t want to happen since rice provides the farmers with money.

Growth What I plan to do with creating a new and improved rice plant would be considered selective breeding because I'm am choosing the traits not nature. If nature chose what traits the rice would have, it would be called natural selection. My suggestions should not be used to create a monoculture. There should be a diverse environment because if there should be a disease, or anything of that sort, and say one plant is resistant while the other plant is not, the non- resistant plant would die. The plant that is resistant would remain. Animals would still be able to survive with the plant that’s left. In a monoculture there is only one type of plant being grown. If a disease were to come and the plant was not resistant to the disease, all of the plants in the monoculture would die, leaving the animals that eat that plant to die of starvation. *Of course disease is not the only factor that could effect the plant, disease was just used as an example.*

Engineering Since genetic engineering is the changing of the genes of an organism by a scientist, it would help with trying to create a new rice plant because then instead of cross pollinating plants and hoping you get the desired traits in the offspring, you would be sure you are getting the correct traits because you are actually taking the desired traits from the plants DNA and creating a new organism. The scientists divide the cells to get to the DNA of another organism and take the desired trait and place into, in this case, a rice plant, creating a new organism that’s most likely improved than the original rice plant.

Advantages My idea to create a better plant to feed the world by using genetic engineering instead of selective breeding is a good plan because with genetic engineering you can just change the genes but taking out a gene from and organism and put it into the rice, to create a better rice plant. This method completely assures you get the desired traits. Also genetic engineering is faster than selective breeding because with selective breeding you have to keep cross-pollinating to try and get the desired traits, which won’t happen until after a few generations. Another reason is that you could create even better rice because there is more possible traits to incorporate into a new rice plant since you can take any desirable trait from pretty much any plant of your choosing.

Disadvantages The disadvantages of my idea to use genetic engineering is that, say they took and trait that was resistant to pests and put it in the rice. Since the rice is different from the organism you got the resistant to pests trait from, it could kill, not only a predator of rice but other harmful animals which could mess up the food chain and just throw everything off balance. Also if a scientist unknowingly makes a mistake then the new plant wouldn’t be correct, and then if the new plant if put into nature it could cause negative affects and its surroundings. Scientists could try to control or eliminate these dangers by working slowly and carefully. Also they should test the new organism in an controlled environment to see its effect on the environment before actually putting it into nature.

Work Cited Kolodner, Janet L., Joseph S. Krajcik, Daniel C. Edlson, Brian J. Reiser, and Mary L. Starr. Project-Based Inquiry Science. Armonk, New York: Herff Jones Education Division, Print. Genetics.