Fun Fact

Oryza rufipogon may be the most important wild plant you've never heard of — its genes have helped feed billions of people. • A single gene from O. rufipogon called Xa21, cloned in the 1990s, confers broad-spectrum resistance to bacterial blight, one of the most devastating rice diseases in Asia and Africa • The wild abortive CMS line, discovered in a single O. rufipogon plant on Hainan Island, China, in 1970, became the genetic foundation for hybrid rice — a technology credited with producing enough additional rice to feed over 80 million more people annually • Despite being a "weed" in many rice fields, O. rufipogon represents a genetic treasure trove that plant breeders continue to mine for solutions to emerging threats like climate change and new disease strains • The species can hybridize with cultivated rice so readily that "weedy rice" (fertile offspring of O. rufipogon × O. sativa crosses) has become one of the most economically damaging weeds in global rice production, costing billions of dollars annually in yield losses and control measures