Wei Li, Ke Yang, Chaofan Hu, Waseem Abbas, Jian Zhang, Pengkun Xu, Bo Cheng, Juncheng Zhang, Wenjing Yin, Abdullah Shalmani, Lianghuan Qu, Qingya Lv, Bingchen Li, Yuqing He, Xuelei Lai, Lizhong Xiong, Qifa Zhang, Yibo Li*

Cell, Online now April 30, 2025, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.04.011

SUMMARY

Rising global temperatures threaten crop grain quality and yield; however, how temperature regulates grain quality and how to achieve synergistic thermotolerance for both quality and yield remain unknown. Here, we identified a rice major locus, QT12, which negatively controls grain-quality field thermotolerance by disrupting endosperm storage substance homeostasis through over-activating unfolded protein response (UPR). Natural variations in QT12 and an NF-Y complex form a natural gene on-off system to modulate QT12 expression and thermotolerance. High temperatures weaken NF-YB9/NF-YC10 interactions with NF-YA8, releasing QT12 suppression and triggering quality deterioration. Low QT12 expression confers superior quality and increases elite rice yield up to 1.31–1.93 times under large-scale high-temperature trials. Two trait regulatory haplotypes (TRHs) from co-selected variations of the four genetically unlinked genes in NF-Ys-QT12 were identified for subspecies thermotolerance differentiation. Our work provides mechanistic insights into rice field thermotolerance and offers a proof-of-concept breeding strategy to break stress-growth and yield-quality trade-offs.

论文链接：https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00413-1