By Melody M. Aguiba, Manila Bulletin via SEAMEO SEARCA

The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PRRI), through a Rockefeller Foundation grant, is developing techniques to accelerate production of hybrid rice seed which should speed up distribution of the high-yielding rice technology in the country.

Dr. Antonio A. Alfonso, PRRI biotechnology and plant breeding chief, said a technique called "molecular marking" is hoped over the long term to develop ways to shorten the process of seed production.

The studies on "molecular marking" in hybrid rice is financed by a $67,000 grant by Rockefeller Foundation, a private philanthropist group food security education. Rockefeller Foundation earlier financed Alfonso's doctorate studies at Cornell University where he successfully cloned an RF gene in the flower petunia.

Molecular marking is a way of determining the presence of a desired gene, for instance disease resistance, and in this case, a rice plant parental lines ability to become fertile or ability to self-pollinate. Specifically, it involves finding the gene of a parental line in hybrid rice, the R line, also called the "restorer" and is marked "Rf".

The identification of a desired gene through molecular marking may particularly involve the objective of producing more A lines which are traditionally crossed with B lines in order to produce a fertile A line which in turn is crossed with R lines to produce F1, the commercial hybrid seeds being sown by farmers.