High-efficiency breeding of early-maturing rice cultivars via CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing

Rice is a staple food for more than half of the human population.It has been estimated that by 2030,40%more rice needs to be produced in order to meet the growing demand（Khush,2005）.One of the strategies to improve rice productivity is to enlarge rice growth areas, such as the northward expansion of the growth region in Heilongjiang Province, the northernmost region of China （Li et al., 2015）. However, the northward cultivation is accompanied with daylength extension and temperature decrease, which are unfavor- able for rice, a tropical short-day plant, to complete flowering and seed setting. Thus, the need for early-maturing rice cultivars with extremely low photoperiod sensitivity is urgent.