Pigmented rice is known to be much more nutritious than white rice and could be an important resource to improve human health and combat malnutrition. However, improved yield and agronomic traits are needed if these varieties, which include black, brown and red, are to become widely accepted by farmers.

An international team led by KAUST’s Magdy Mahfouz and Khalid Sedeek has shown that desirable agronomic traits of shorter stem length and early maturity can be introduced into black rice.

Sedeek, a postdoc in Mahfouz’s lab, says the first step toward making these improvements has been to gather comprehensive genomic information.

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