Metabolic engineering for increased nutritional quality in rice

Nutritional imbalance has led to many chronic diseases and severely affected people’s quality of life. Developing nutrient-dense crops has emerged as a strategy for improving the current state of human nutritional intake globally. We summarized recent advances in rice biotechnology breeding focusing on increasing micronutrients and active natural products, highlighting the cutting-edge metabolic engineering technologies and strategies employed. We discussed common challenges and potential solutions in metabolic engineering breeding. On this basis, the future development direction of rice nutrient metabolism industrialization was prospected.