Abstract
Globally, 94–220 million people in regions with arsenic (As)-contaminated soil or groundwater face significant health risks. Rice, the primary staple food in these areas, is the main source of As exposure for a large portion of this population. Developing low-As rice cultivars provides a sustainable strategy to reduce dietary As exposure. However, As uptake in rice shares pathways with nutrient uptake, such as phosphate (P) transporters. The lack of As-specific transporters makes it challenging to reduce As accumulation in plants by regulating As uptake genes, as such approaches risk disrupting P uptake and plant growth. Here, we functionally characterized two phosphate transporter genes, OsPht1;9/OsPht1;10, which play a key role in arsenate (AsV) uptake and translocation in rice but minimally contribute to P utilization. Under hydroponic conditions, the double mutants of OsPht1;9/1;10 exhibited a 46.2–65.7% reduction in shoot As accumulation, with the As concentrations in xylem sap being 16.5–34.8% lower than the wild type controls. In multi-year field trials at two locations, simultaneous knockout of OsPht1;9/1;10 significantly decreased grain As concentration by 19.2–47.3%, without compromising yield. This study identifies novel gene-editing targets for low-As rice development and provides a breakthrough in mitigating As contamination exposure while enhancing food safety.
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All data generated, collected, or analyzed in this study are included in the main text, Supplementary Information, and Supplementary Data. Numeric source data for all figures are provided in the Supplementary Data 2 file. The gene expression data from the transcriptomic analysis in this study are provided in Table S1 and the Supplementary Data 1 file. The raw sequence data reported in this paper have been deposited in the Genome Sequence Archive (Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics 2025) in the National Genomics Data Center (Nucleic Acids Res 2025), China National Center for Bioinformation/Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (GSA: CRA037744), which are publicly accessible at https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa66.
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This study did not use any custom code.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 42322701, 42307009), and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (No. 2024A1515011134, 2025A1515010723). We also thank Man Zhao from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, for technical support and suggestions on ICP analysis.
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Y.C. conceived the idea. H. -Y. F. performed the experimental studies and wrote the manuscript. C. -T. C., M. -Y. X., D. S., X. -X. S., N. G., J. -H. Q., and C. -J. L. performed the experimental studies. Y.C., Y. -T. T and R. -L. Q. supervised the work. Y.C., G. -H. X and L. Q. M revised the paper. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Feng, H., Chen, C., Xu, M. et al. Knocking out OsPht1;9-1;10 genes decreases arsenic accumulation in rice (Oryza sativa) grains. Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09741-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09741-5
