Pilots and passengers flying near the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station may do a double-take when they see what’s growing in the fields near the station headquarters just outside Crowley, La.

The purple rice comes from a marker developed by Kenneth Gravois, now the LSU AgCenter sugarcane breeder, when he was working as a rice breeder at the University of Arkansas, says Steve Linscombe, director of the LSU AgCenter’s Southwest Region, and a rice breeder himself.

Linscombe says the gold leaf line is an induced mutant that was selected from an Indica population developed by Neil Rutger. This line was obtained from the Oryza (GSOR) Collection at Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark. Rutger is director and supervisory geneticist at the Bumpers Center.