Germplasm degeneration occurs during the long-term cultivation of root-and rhizome-derived traditional Chinese medicine(RR-TCM), which seriously restricts the high-quality development of their industry. Therefore, it is urgent to solve the problem of germplasm degeneration through variety breeding. In this paper, based on previously published research articles, monographs, and news reports, the research progresses on the number and origins, breeding methods, and selection of new varieties of RR-TCM listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia(Edition 2020) were summarized and analyzed. The results show that there are 169 kinds of RR-TCM listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia(Edition 2020), originated from 223 origins with three breeding methods(i.e., seed propagation, vegetative reproduction, and tissue culture), and there are 215 species derived from seed propagation, 177 species derived from vegetative reproduction, and 164 species derived from tissue culture. To date, there are 62 origins breeding new varieties through conventional breeding, cross breeding, mutation breeding, ploidy breeding, or modern biotechnology breeding methods, including 57 origins breeding 145 new varieties through conventional breeding, 10 origins breeding 43 new varieties through mutation breeding, and seven origins breeding 12 new varieties through cross breeding method. They are used mainly to improve yield, disease resistance, and active ingredient content, but only a few new varieties have been widely used. This review will provide useful references in variety breeding, quality breeding, and standardized planting of RR-TCM.
Plant Breeding/methods* ; Plant Roots/growth & development* ; Rhizome/growth & development* ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; Plants, Medicinal/classification* ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional

Atractylodes lancea is a perennial herbaceous plant of Asteraceae, with rhizomes for medical use. However, A. lancea plants from different habitats have great variability, and the germplasm resources of A. lancea are unclear and mixed during production. Therefore, it is urgent to protect new varieties of A. lancea. The distinctness, uniformity, and stability(DUS) testing of new plant varieties is the foundation of plant variety protection, and the DUS testing guidelines are the technical basis for variety approval agencies to conduct DUS testing. In this study, the phenotypic traits of 94 germplasm accessions of A. lancea were investigated considering the breeding and variety characteristics of A. lancea in China. The traits were classified and described, and 24 traits were preliminarily determined, including 20 basic traits that must be tested and four traits selected to be tested. The 20 basic traits included 3 quality traits, 5 false quality traits, and 12 quantitative traits, corresponding to 1 plant traits, 2 stem traits, 8 leaf traits, 6 flower traits, and 3 seed traits. The measurement ranges and coefficients of variation of eight quantitative traits were determined, on the basis of which the grading criteria and codes of the traits were determined and assigned. The guidelines has guiding significance for the trait evaluation, utilization, and breeding of new varieties of A. lancea.
Atractylodes/growth & development* ; China ; Phenotype ; Guidelines as Topic ; Plant Breeding

Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) is the pillar for the development of motherland medicine, and animal medicine has a long history of application in China, characterized by wide resources, strong activity, definite efficacy, and great benefits. It has significant potential and important status in the consumption market of raw materials of TCM. In the context of global climate change, farming system alterations, and low renewability, the depletion of wild medicinal animal resources has accelerated. Accordingly, the conservation and sustainable utilization of wild resources of animal medicinal materials has become a problem that garners increasing attention and urgently needs to be solved. This paper summarizes the current situation of domestic and foreign medicinal animal breeding and research progress in industrial application in recent years and points out the issues related to standardized breeding, germplasm selection and breeding, and quality evaluation standards for medicinal animals. Furthermore, this paper discusses standardized breeding, quality standards, resource protection and utilization, and the search for alternative resources for rare and endangered medicinal animals. It proposes that researchers should systematically carry out in-depth basic research on animal medicine, improve the breeding scale and level of medicinal animals, employ modern technology to enhance the quality standards of medicinal materials, and strengthen the research and development of alternative resources. This approach aims to effectively address the relationship between protection and utilization and make a significant contribution to the sustainable development of medicinal animal resources and the animal-based Chinese medicinal material industry.
Animals ; Breeding ; China ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Conservation of Natural Resources

Synthetic biology, recognized as one of the most revolutionary interdisciplinary fields in the 21st century, has established innovative strategies for the genetic improvement of rice through the integration of multidisciplinary technologies including genome editing, genetic circuit design, metabolic engineering, and artificial intelligence. This review systematically summarizes recent research advancements and breakthrough achievements in the application of synthetic biology in the genetic improvement of rice, focusing on three critical domains: yield improvement, nutritional quality fortification, and reinforcement of disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance. It elucidates that synthetic biology enables precise genomic and metabolic pathway engineering through modular, standard, and systematic approaches, effectively overcoming the limitations of conventional breeding methods characterized by prolonged cycles and restricted trait modification capabilities. The implementation of synthetic biology has facilitated synergistic improvement of multi-traits, thereby providing critical technical references for developing elite rice cultivars with superior productivity and nutritional value. These technological breakthroughs hold significant implications for ensuring global food security and promoting green and sustainable development of agriculture.
Oryza/growth & development* ; Synthetic Biology/methods* ; Metabolic Engineering ; Plant Breeding/methods* ; Gene Editing ; Genetic Engineering/methods* ; Plants, Genetically Modified/genetics* ; Disease Resistance/genetics*

Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is a pivotal indicator for achieving high wheat yields and sustainable resource utilization. This paper reviews recent research advances in the NUE of wheat, emphasizing genotypic variations, physiological mechanisms, molecular regulation, and agronomic management practices. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the critical regulatory nodes in nitrogen uptake, transport, assimilation, and redistribution, summarizes the current research bottlenecks, and makes an outlook on the future research directions. We then propose a strategy integrating emerging biotechnologies with precision agronomic management to enhance both wheat yields and NUE. This review aims to offer a theoretical framework for breeding nitrogen-efficient wheat cultivars and promoting the eco-friendly production of wheat.
Triticum/growth & development* ; Nitrogen/metabolism* ; Plant Breeding

Epigenetics refers to a heritable phenomenon that dynamically modulates gene expression without altering the DNA sequence, through molecular mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modification, non-coding RNA, chromatin remodeling, and RNA modifications. In plants, these modifications are extensively involved in key biological processes, including flowering time, gametogenesis, stress responses, and immune defenses. Over the past few decades, the research on epigenetics has gradually shifted from fundamental studies primarily conducted in Arabidopsis thaliana to investigations in various crop species such as rice and tomato. This transition has revealed the multifaceted roles of epigenetic regulation in shaping agronomic traits. This review integrates current knowledge of epigenetic regulatory mechanisms and their functions in plant responses to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Epigenetic editing tools such as CRISPR-dCas9 enable targeted DNA methylation or histone acetylation. Emerging transformation technologies, including magnetic nanoparticles and virus-based delivery systems, have the potential to overcome the bottlenecks of plant regeneration, offering new possibilities for precise epigenetic editing. In future agriculture, it is essential to further elucidate multi-layered epigenetic regulatory mechanisms at the single-cell level, develop efficient delivery systems, and leverage artificial intelligence to advance the application of epigenetic breeding for sustainable agricultural development.
Epigenesis, Genetic/genetics* ; Crops, Agricultural/genetics* ; Plant Breeding/methods* ; DNA Methylation/genetics* ; Gene Editing ; Disease Resistance/genetics* ; CRISPR-Cas Systems

Eggplant is an important horticultural crop and one of the most widely grown vegetables in the Solanaceae family. Eggplant fruit-related agronomic traits are complex quantitative traits with low efficiency and long cycle time for traditional breeding selection. With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology and bioinformatics tools, genome-wide association study (GWAS) has shown great application potential in analyzing the genetic rules of complex agronomic traits related to eggplant fruits. This paper first reviews the progress of genome-wide association analysis in eggplant fruit shape, fruit color and other fruit-related agronomic traits. Subsequently, aiming at the problem of missing heritability, which is common in the genetic studies of eggplant quantitative traits, this paper puts forward the development strategies of eggplant GWAS in the future based on the hot spots of application of four GWAS strategies in the research of agronomics traits related to eggplant fruits. Lastly, the application of GWAS strategy in the field of eggplant molecular breeding is expected to provide a theoretical basis and reference for the future use of GWAS to analyze the genetic basis of various eggplant fruit-related traits and to select fruit materials that meet consumer needs.
Solanum melongena/genetics* ; Fruit/genetics* ; Genome-Wide Association Study ; Plant Breeding ; Agriculture ; Vegetables

Excavating the quantitative trait locus (QTL) associated with rice cooking quality, analyzing candidate genes, and improving cooking quality-associated traits of rice varieties by genetic breeding can effectively improve the taste of rice. In this study, we used the indica rice HZ, the japonica rice Nekken2 and 120 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) populations constructed from them as experimental materials to measure the gelatinization temperature (GT), gel consistency (GC) and amylose content (AC) of rice at the maturity stage. We combined the high-density genetic map for QTL mapping. A total of 26 QTLs associated with rice cooking quality (1 QTL associated with GT, 13 QTLs associated with GC, and 12 QTLs associated with AC) were detected, among which the highest likelihood of odd (LOD) value reached 30.24. The expression levels of candidate genes in the localization interval were analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), and it was found that the expression levels of six genes were significantly different from that in parents. It was speculated that the high expression of LOC_Os04g20270 and LOC_Os11g40100 may greatly increase the GC of rice, while the high expression of LOC_Os01g04920 and LOC_Os02g17500 and the low expression of LOC_Os03g02650 and LOC_Os05g25840 may reduce the AC. The results lay a molecular foundation for the cultivation of new high-quality rice varieties, and provide important genetic resources for revealing the molecular regulation mechanism of rice cooking quality.
Quantitative Trait Loci ; Oryza/genetics* ; Plant Breeding ; Cooking ; Genetic Association Studies

TCP family as plant specific transcription factor, plays an important role in different aspects of plant development. In order to screen TCP family members in tobacco, the homologous sequences of tobacco and Arabidopsis TCP family were identified by genome-wide homologous alignment. The physicochemical properties, phylogenetic relationships and cis-acting elements were analyzed by bioinformatics. The homologous genes of AtTCP3/AtTCP4 were screened, and RT-qPCR was used to detect the changes of gene expression upon 20% PEG6000 treatment. The results show that tobacco contains 63 TCP family members. Their amino acid sequence length ranged from 89 aa to 596 aa, and their protein hydropathicity grand average of hydropathicity (GRAVY) ranged from -1.147 to 0.125. The isoelectric point (pI) ranges from 4.42 to 9.94, the number of introns is 0 to 3, and the subcellular location is all located in the nucleus. The results of conserved domain and phylogenetic relationship analysis showed that the tobacco TCP family can be divided into PCF, CIN and CYC/TB1 subfamilies, and each subfamily has a stable sequence. The results of cis-acting elements in gene promoter region showed that TCP family genes contain low docile acting elements (LTR) and a variety of stress and metabolic regulation related elements (MYB, MYC). Analysis of gene expression patterns showed that AtTCP3/AtTCP4 homologous genes (NtTCP6, NtTCP28, NtTCP30, NtTCP33, NtTCP42, NtTCP57, NtTCP63) accounted for 20% PEG6000 treatment significantly up-regulated/down-regulated expression, and NtTCP30 and NtTCP57 genes were selected as candidate genes in response to drought. The results of this study analyzed the TCP family in the tobacco genome and provided candidate genes for the study of drought-resistance gene function and variety breeding in tobacco.
Nicotiana/genetics* ; Phylogeny ; Plant Breeding ; Amino Acid Sequence ; Arabidopsis ; Polyethylene Glycols

In this study, the chloroplast genome of Camellia insularis Orel & Curry was sequenced using high-throughput sequencing technology. The results showed that the chloroplast genome of C. insularis was 156 882 bp in length with a typical tetrad structure, encoding 132 genes, including 88 protein-coding genes, 36 tRNA genes, and 8 rRNA genes. Codon preference analysis revealed that the highest number of codons coded for leucine, with a high A/U preference in the third codon position. Additionally, 67 simple sequence repeats (SSR) loci were identified, with a preference for A and T bases. The inverted repeat (IR) boundary regions of the chloroplast genome of C. insularis were relatively conserved, except for a few variable regions. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that C. insularis was most closely related to C. fascicularis. Yellow camellia is a valuable material for genetic engineering breeding. This study provides fundamental genetic information on chloroplast engineering and offers valuable resources for conducting in-depth research on the evolution, species identification, and genomic breeding of yellow Camellia.
Genome, Chloroplast/genetics* ; Phylogeny ; Plant Breeding ; Camellia/genetics* ; Chloroplasts/genetics*