| The development and application of available rice significantly improve public nutrition and health
status who feed on rice in China. Functional rice mainly includes colored rice, low gluten rice, high resistant starch rice,
micronutrient-rich rice, and drug manufacturing bioreactor rice. Colored rice is purple or reddish-brown due to the
accumulation of anthocyanins in the seed pericarp. There are two categories of red rice and black rice controlled by two and
three genes, respectively. It is a crucial nourishing food with the same medicine and food for the physically weak. So far,
a large number of colored rice varieties have been bred and planted in China. For instance, low gluten rice is suitable for kidney disease patients as daily consumption due to its low gluten content. At present, many varieties have been bred in China
and Japan for commercial development and application. High-resistant starch rice cannot be absorbed by the intestine because
some starch fails to be decomposed by human amylase. The peak value of postprandial blood glucose was subsequently declined
in people with diabetes. It has become an important staple food for people with diabetes. Due to the high content of particular
vitamins or beneficial trace elements in rice, micronutrient-rich rice is beneficial to the treatment and health care of patients
with different deficiency diseases. At home and abroad, micronutrient-rich rice varieties represented by "golden rice" have been
bred. Drug manufacturing bioreactor rice was used to produce pharmaceutical recombinant proteins, peptides, or other bioactive
substances to synthesize and extract target functional components. There are successful reports, commercial development, and
application that have been attempted in the world. The global demand for functional rice is increasing, and the research on
functional rice has broad prospects. In the future, functional rice breeding will probably change from single type to compound
type. Moreover, the critical point to this breeding also evolved from health care type to the combination of both health care and
auxiliary curative effect. In order to achieve successful breedings of new functional rice varieties, the combination of multiomics biotechnology and conventional breeding, continuous germplasm mining and innovation becomes the future direction of
functional rice research. |
