Molecular approaches in improving the rice allelopathy

This article reviews the recent advances in molecular approaches to study crop QTLs to improve the rice allelopathy. Many QTLs have been cloned in plants using the map-based cloning method. The whole cloning process of Hd1, a major QTL controlling heading date, is introduced, cloned by a map-based cloning strategy for the first time in rice. If allelopathic genes are cloned and transferred into high quality and high yielding rice varieties, weeds will be inhibited and use of herbicides will be decreased. Till now the study on QTL mapping of rice allelopathy is still in the primary stage. Further study on QTL mapping of rice allelopathy, is to identify the rice allelopathic phenotypes by developing new methods, develop and construct target QTL-NILs by using MAS and finally to achieve fine mapping and cloning target QTLs by map-based cloning strategy.