Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Director General of Yazhouwan National Laboratory
EDUCATION
1991 PhD of Biology, Brandeis University
1984 Master Degree of Science, Institute of Genetics (IGDB), CAS
1982 Bachelor Degree of Agronomy, Anhui Agricultural College (Anhui Agricultural University)
PROFESSION
2022- Director General, Yazhouwan National Laboratory
2022- Professor, Yazhouwan National Laboratory
2011-2016 President, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences; Vice Minister of Agriculture of China
2001-2011 Vice President, CAS
1999-2004 Director General, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB), CAS
1994- Professor, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB), CAS
1991-1994 Postdoctoral research, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant research at Cornell University
ACHIEVEMENT
2020 TWAS-Lenovo Science Award
2018 Future Science Prize
2017 China National Natural Science Award (First Class)
2005 China National Natural Science Award (Second Class)
2015 Foreign Fellow, The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge
Understanding molecular mechanisms that control high-yield superior-quality traits and breeding elite varieties of rice2013 EMBO Foreign Associate
2012 Member, The German Academy of Sciences
2011 Foreign Associate, US National Academy of Sciences
2004 Fellow, The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS)
2001 Academician, Chinese Academy of Sciences
1999 Member, Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network
Understanding molecular mechanisms that control high-yield superior-quality traits and breeding elite varieties of rice
Jiayang Li
Yazhouwan National Laboratory, Sanya, China
Rice is one of the most important crops, feeding more than half of the world’s population. It is a great challenge to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying grain yield and quality in rice and to develop a powerful system for breeding high-yield good-quality rice varieties, especially in the context of growing population and climate change. My lab has systematically cloned and functionally studied key genes controlling rice plant architecture, which is crucial for grain yield and mainly determined by tiller number, plant height, tiller angle, panicle size, grain number, and grain weight; and further revealed the genetic networks that regulate the eating and cooking quality, resistance starch biosynthesis, and storage stability of rice grains. Based on these discoveries, we have established a powerful molecular design breeding system in rice through integrating the fundamental knowledge of plant architecture and starch biosynthesis with biotechnology, and succeed in breeding a series of new elite rice varieties with high yield and superior quality. At present, ZhongKeFa and JiaYouZhongKe rice varieties have become the main rice varieties in north-east and mid-east China. The work has developed an effective strategy to break the mutual restrictiveness between yield and quality, making a significant progress in the rice functional genomic study and breeding superior rice varieties by rational design.
