A central enigma in crop improvement lies in introducing beneficial traits without fitness trade-offs. Rice, the cornerstone of global food security, demands multifaceted genetic innovation to sustain yield, quality, and resilience in the face of mounting climatic constraints. With the global population projected to surpass ten billion, functional master regulators such as miRNAs stand out as transformative molecular tools, capable of orchestrating complex trait networks and offering a tangible path toward the next green revolution. These are robust fine-tuners that orchestrate a myriad of functional processes and provide a value addition in emerging technologies such as assisted breeding, genome editing, and genomic selection to make rice production feasible. Herein, we have provided a comprehensive synthesis and updates on functional miRNA-mediated agronomically advantageous trait improvement exclusively for rice. It represents the latest functional understanding of miRNAs and their involvement as signatures of domestication and divergence processes, in support of the previously established notion and recent updates on emerging miRNA-assisted resources and technologies, such as their application as artificial solutions for improving genotypes, coding, and dietary potentialities for environmental safeguards and innovative biotherapeutics. Recent updates signify their robust cross-kingdom communicators' potential for multifaceted non-host dialoguing, and their integrative action relies on the coordination with other non-coding regulatory elements for various downstream trait regulation. Moreover, specific highlights refer to the application of miRNAs for rice agronomical trait improvements, broadly classified into three functional domains, viz., biotic and abiotic stresses and yield and quality traits. Such updated functional aspects of different miRNA modules would strengthen rice improvement by facilitating a foundation and future roadmap for miRNA-mediated trait discovery and improvement.
Chandra et al. (Thu,) studied this question.