Significant Progress In Gene Mining For Wheat Yield Traits

Recently, a new gene for an important yield trait in wheat was discovered by the scientific research team of the Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICSAS) with the collaboration of Associate Researcher Li Tian, which has significant regulatory effects on wheat spikelet number, tiller number and yield per plant. The results were published online in the journal Science.

　　

Wheat is one of the world's most important food crops, and increasing wheat yields is strategically important for ensuring food security. Wheat yield is mainly influenced by three main factors: spike size per unit area, grain weight and number of seeds on the spike, of which spike size per unit area is influenced by the number of tillers. The spike structure of wheat can directly affect the development and final yieldof wheat spikes.

Researchers have identified a master gene, TaCOL-B5, which encodes a CONSTANS-like family of proteins, that controls spikelet number in wheat by map cloning. Transgenic overexpression of the dominant allele of TaCol-B5 revealed an average yield increase of 11.9% in the overexpressed strain, with the most significant yield increase of 19.8% in one strain.

In addition to increasing the number of spikelets, the gene was also able to increase the number of effective tillers per plant and improve wheat yield. It was found that different alleles of TaCOL-B5 encode proteins with amino acid site mutations and differential protein phosphorylation levels in response to the protein kinase TaK4.

The dominant allele TaCol-B5 is present in dicot wheat and the variant is currently very rare in wheat germplasm worldwide. The discovery of this gene is a landmark for gaining insight into the mechanisms of action of genes for yield traits in wheat.