Progress in the Study of Aromatic Rice Sorghum Products

Aroma is an important quality trait in food products, and aromatic rice is preferred by consumers because of its attractive aroma, which in turn generates higher economic value.

2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (2-AP) is an important volatile in aromatic rice, and different mutation types of rice betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase (BETAINE Different mutant types of ALDEHYDE DEHYDROGENASE 2 (BADH2) can all lead to the accumulation of 2-AP for aroma production (Okpala et al., 2019). Scientists found that this mechanism is conserved in rice, maize, sorghum, soybean, cucumber and other crops.

Currently, fragrant rice varieties (Tang et al., 2021) and fragrant maize materials (Wang et al., 2021) have been obtained using gene editing techniques.

　　

Sorghum is used as a staple food, feed crop, brewing industry, and raw material for bioenergy industry. The creation of aromatic sorghum materials and breeding of rice flower aromatic sorghum varieties will lead to high quality development of sorghum as a sorghum dietary fiber food, brewing, vinegar making, and forage animal feed industries.

　

Xie Qi's group at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology to knock out the sorghum SbBADH2 gene for the first time in sorghum to create a new type of aromatic sorghum.

Compared with the wild type, both seeds and leaves of the sbbadh2 mutant exuded a distinctive jasmine fragrance, and significant accumulation of 2-AP content in the mutant seeds and leaves was detected by LC-MS.

The 2-AP content reached 0.177 mg/kg in the dried seeds of the mutant and up to 0.801 mg/kg in the young leaves of the mutant plants. whole sorghum is the second largest source of silage, therefore, the study was carried out to test the feeding of herbivores.

The study dried and ground the leaves of wild-type and sbbadh2 mutant plants and mixed them uniformly into the feed for standard rabbit feeding experiments, respectively. The results showed that feeds supplemented with dried powder of sbbadh2 aromatic sorghum plants were more attractive to rabbits and significantly increased feed intake compared to the wild-type control (Figure).

This study confirms that the straw of aromatic sorghum enhances the intake of herbivores and will contribute to the health of livestock.

　　

The related research results were published online in the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology (DOI:10.1111/jipb.13232). The research work was supported by CAS Strategic Pioneering Science and Technology Special Project (Class A) "Seed Precision Design and Creation" and CAS Youth Innovation Promotion Association.