Enhanced sucrose loading improves rice yield by increasing grain size

Transgenic rice plants expressing the Arabidopsis phloem-specific sucrose transporter AtSUC2, which loads Suc into the phloem, showed an increase in grain yield of up to 16% relative to wild-type plants in field trials. The goal was to reveal how expressed AtSUC2 in rice leads to increased grain yield analyzing global gene expression. Microarray analyses were performed on flag leaves and developing seeds between wild-type plants (WT) and transgenic plants (line 51) on the 10th day after fertilization, i.e. flag leaves of WT versus flag leaves of line 51; developing seeds of WT versus developing seeds of line 51. Three biological replicates were performed for flag leaves and developing seeds between WT and line 51.