Fig. 3.

Strategies for breeding rice cultivars with optimum heading dates. Rational design of long day (LD) repression genes (such as Ghd7 and DTH8) and LD promoting genes (such as DTH2 and Ehd4) for rice cultivars adapting to different latitudes. Three strategies can be used, including pyramiding heading date alleles by traditional cross‐breeding with the assistance of molecular markers, modulating the function or expression level of heading date genes by genetic engineering, and modifying heading genes by CRISPR‐Cas gene editing technology.