The McCouch Lab investigates natural variation in the genus Oryza, focusing on how it evolved, how it is distributed in both domesticated and wild Oryza species, how it conditions complex phenotypes and how it can be efficiently utilized in rice improvement.

We have pioneered studies demonstrating that low-yielding wild and exotic Oryza species harbor genes and quantitative trait loci (QTL) that can be used to enhance the performance of modern, high-yielding rice cultivars. This work is done in collaboration with scientists and breeders in Asia, Africa, North and South America.

The McCouch lab currently has several NSF and USDA funded projects and collaborations. The central focus of the lab for the past four years has been the Rice Diversity (or, "NSF-TV") Project which studies transgressive variation in rice. This project has purified a diversity panel consisting of 400 O. sativa and 100 O. rufipogon accessions, characterized the panel for genotypic variation using an Affymetrix 44,000-SNP genotyping array, and evaluated phenotypic variation over two years in replicated trials for 47 traits at the USDA-ARS Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, AR. Recently funded (USDA-AFRI) related work will construct a 1M-SNP rice genotyping array and will genotype 850 diverse rice samples, as well as 1440 additional rice samples from the International Rice Research Center (IRRI). Together with collaborators in the USDA and IRRI, the McCouch lab has developed a suite of "breeders mini-chips" using sub-sets of SNPs relevant to specific gene pools and subpopulations. We focus particular attention on the genetics and physiology of micronutrient uptake and partitioning in rice in collaboration with Leon Kochian's lab and have a USDA-AFRI grant on aluminum tolerance.

In collaboration with colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor Lab and Oregon State University, we have since 2001 been involved with the development and curation of Gramene, a large, publicly available comparative plant genome database that integrates knowledge from many different disciplines. Gramene was hatched out of the RiceGenes database project, an early effort by the McCouch lab that organized rice genetic maps and markers using AceDB.

For much more information about our work, see our Projects page, and explore our Publications.

The McCouch RiceLab, lead by Dr. Susan R. McCouch, is located in the Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.