Fine-tuning gibberellin improves rice alkali-thermal tolerance and yield.

Soil alkalinization and global warming are predicted to pose major challenges to agriculture in the future, as they continue to accelerate, markedly reducing global arable land and crop yields. Therefore, strategies for future agriculture are needed to further improve globally cultivated, relatively high-yielding Green Revolution varieties (GRVs) derived from the SEMIDWARF 1 (SD1) gene. Here we propose that precise regulation of the phytohormone gibberellin (GA) to optimal levels is the key to not only confer alkali-thermal tolerance to GRVs, but also to further enhance their yield.