News: Chinese Scientists Unlock Ancient Genes to Develop Longevity Rice.

Published 10 AM EST, Fri Mar 27, 2026

While modern cultivated rice is an annual that dies after a single harvest, its wild ancestors were hardy perennials. To bridge this gap, plant geneticists Han Bin and Wang Jiawei from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science teamed up to identify the genetic mechanism that allows ancient plants to survive the winter and regrow from their own roots.

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For generations, rice farming has followed an unchanging rhythm: plant, harvest, repeat. Now, Chinese scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have disrupted that cycle by reactivating a dormant genetic trait from wild rice ancestors, producing a variety that regrows from its own roots year after year, much like a fruit tree rather than a seasonal crop. The breakthrough centers on a genetic region called EBT1, which acts as a biological "pause button" on aging, keeping the plant in a youthful, vegetative state that allows it to survive winter and regenerate without replanting.

The practical results are striking. The research team developed an experimental line called G43, which produced roughly 70 secondary shoots compared to the dozen or so typical of conventional rice. By pairing EBT1 with two genes governing low, spreading growth patterns, the team created plants that successfully survived in open field conditions for at least two years, demonstrating that perenniality is not just a laboratory phenomenon but a viable agricultural reality.

The implications extend well beyond rice paddies. As plant geneticist Moto Ashikari of Nagoya University observed, the findings offer a compelling proof of concept that annual crops broadly could be converted into perennials through targeted genetic approaches. Published in the journal Science, the research provides both a deeper understanding of how plants evolved their life-history strategies and a concrete genetic toolkit for improving crop longevity across agriculture.

Like the rice varieties studied here, most commercial cannabis is grown as an annual, cultivated from seed or clone, harvested once or twice, then cut down entirely. Perennial regrowth, known in cannabis as "monster cropping" or stump regeneration, exists but is inconsistent, labor-intensive, and rarely viable at commercial scale. A genetic framework that reliably controls the switch between annual and perennial behavior could change that equation. Applied to cannabis, EBT1-equivalent mechanisms could theoretically allow cultivators to harvest canopy growth repeatedly from established root systems, reducing propagation costs, preserving verified genetics in the field, and dramatically cutting the energy and labor associated with replanting cycles. For operations like large-scale outdoor cultivation or regions with favorable climates, perennial cannabis stock could translate to compounding yields from a single planting event. More broadly, this research validates the idea that the annual/perennial boundary in plants is not fixed biology but an accessible genetic dial, one that cannabis breeders and biotech firms will almost certainly be watching closely.

Source: CGTN