Clonal seeds from hybrid rice by simultaneous genome engineering of meiosis and fertilization genes

Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, is exploited by breeders to produce elite high-yielding crop lines, but beneficial phenotypes are lost in subsequent generations owing to genetic segregation. Clonal propagation through seeds would enable self-propagation of F1 hybrids. Here we report a strategy to enable clonal reproduction of F1 rice hybrids through seeds. We fixed the heterozygosity of F1 hybrid rice by multiplex CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing of the...