Ectopic Expression of a Maize Gene in Rice Increases Grain Length and Yield, but Reduces Drought Stress Tolerance.

As the human population grows rapidly, food shortages will become an even greater problem; therefore, increasing crop yield has become a focus of rice breeding programs. The maize gene, , encoding a putative member of the DUF1645 protein family with an unknown function, was transformed into rice. Phenotypic analysis showed that enhanced expression significantly altered various traits in transgenic rice plants, including increased grain length, width, weight, and number per panicle, resulting in a significant increase in yield, but a decrease in rice tolerance to drought stress.