Luckily, the rice lost it!

Today, rice is the most widely consumed staple food in the world, feeding more than half of the world’s population. We have nothing but a tiny piece of RNA, or ribonucleic acid, to thank, for the mouthfuls of rice we eat! In a recent study, published in the journal The Plant Cell, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, have found that a particular microRNA (miRNA) is the reason we have been able to cultivate rice and harvest greater yields of the grain today. The study was funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Atomic Energy through Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).