Location: Responsive Agricultural Food Systems Research Unit
Project Number: 3093-10700-001-005-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2025
End Date: Jun 30, 2027
Objective:
Purple rice is highly nutritious, containing significant amounts of anthocyanins, iron, vitamin E, fiber, and protein. Given the wide consumption of rice and rice products, in the US and globally, development of purple rice offers health benefits including mitigating chronic and non-chronic illnesses. Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants known to lower the risk of diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Additionally, anthocyanins possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects and supports digestive health in humans. Currently, the major limitation to growing purple rice at commercial scales, is the reported yield drag in previously studied rice cultivars. This project seeks to conduct research to increase nutrient profiles in high yielding varieties to benefit rice producers by increasing the nutritional and healthfulness of rice. The research is designed to benefit rice growers, and producers by providing additional valuable traits that increase the impact of rice product. The research is also directly impactful to consumers and nutrition researchers, healthcare providers, children and other stakeholders.
Approach:
The project will quantify anthocyanins, identify the genes associated with purple rice and analyze the expression of these genes across different genetic backgrounds, tissues, environmental conditions, and crop management practices. Anthocyanin quantities will be measured in pre- and post-harvest stage (fresh grains) to quantify accumulation and gene expression during development and after maturity, and again after cooking to compare how much anthocyanins are retained in edible rice grains. This studies will 1) investigate the anthocyanin accumulation in rice grains using targeted metabolomics to precisely quantify cyanadins, pelargonidins, peonidins and their derivatives in seven purple rice cultivars, 2) quantify gene expression at multiple stages in the development of purple rice using transcriptomics, 3) quantify agronomic traits including yield, grain quality, and nutrient accumulation, 4) quantify anthocyanin content in pre-cooked and post-cooked rice. Overall this collaborative project will benefit rice farmers, food produces and associated stakeholders.