Dear Colleagues,

Rice is one of the most consumed and in-demand cereal crops in the world, and a substantial yield increase helps to ease the issue of global food shortages. With the improvement of people’s living standards and rice trade worldwide, average per capita consumption is decreasing, while the demand for high-quality rice is increasing. Rice grain quality, including milling quality (MQ), appearance quality (AQ), eating and cooking quality (ECQ), nutritional quality (NQ) and safe quality, is critical for determining economic value in the marketplace and improving consumer satisfaction. Although key genes essential for rice quality formation, such as the Wx gene, have been functionally characterized in depth, progress in genetic improvement of rice quality is still slow. A major reason for this is the lack of understanding surrounding the complex molecular mechanism behind grain quality. A combination of classical map-based cloning, Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and multi-omics methods should be used to identify more genes involved in rice grain quality, which would greatly help to expand our understanding of the molecular basis of rice grain quality formation. In addition, gene editing has also been shown to improve rice quality. In this Special Issue, we are focusing on understanding to a greater degree the molecular mechanism of quality formation in rice. All types of manuscripts are encouraged.

Topics for the call for paper include but not restricted to:

• GWAS and quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis for rice grain quality using natural rice resources and genetic populations;
• Identification of genes affecting rice grain quality, including storage substance synthesis and transport through forward and reverse genetics;
• The application of gene editing in breeding high-quality rice;
• New tools used to explore genes or understand the molecular mechanism of quality formation;
• Super allele identification and utilization in grain quality breeding.

Prof. Dr. Yulong Ren
Dr. Hui Dong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• rice quality
• milling quality
• appearance quality
• eating and cooking quality
• nutritional quality
• safety quality
• map-based cloning
• multi-omics genes
• regulatory network
• molecular mechanism