The new rice was bred by successfully crossing (or mating) two different rice parents – the exotic wild rice species Oryza coarctata and rice variety IR56 of the cultivated rice species O. sativa. What is extra special about this breakthrough is that O. coarctata is extremely difficult to cross with cultivated rice varieties. The location of O. coarctata in the rice genome sequence is at the other end of the spectrum from that of rice varieties such as IR56. Dr. Jena’s team successfully rescued three embryos out of 34,000 crosses. Out of these three, one plant survived to give scientists enough material to back-cross and make sure that only the desired trait - double salt-tolerance - is acquired from the wild species.