Discovery to help wheat adapt to climate change

With hotter and drier conditions experienced in the spring as a result of climate change breeders have been working to try and get earlier flowering varieties that are not exposed to severe heat shock at flowering which drastically reduce yield.

However, traditionally breeders attempting to develop varieties with an earlier flowering have not been able to overcome yield penalties, especially in favourable years, with the gene responsible for the earlier flowering also reducing the number of grain-bearing florets on the wheat head.

Scott Boden, a Future Fellow at the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine has been part of a research project looking at the gene, called Photoperiod-1 (Ppd-1) and seeing whether there was a way of getting the best of both worlds.

The early findings are promising.

By examining genes whose expression is influenced by Ppd-1, Dr Boden's research team discovered two factors that can be edited to influence the number and arrangement of grain-bearing spikelets that form on a wheat ear, as well as the timing of ear emergence.

"The deletion of one transcription factor, called ALOG1, increases branching in both wheat and barley, and suggests that this gene could be a major regulator of unbranched spikes in the Triticeae (cereal) family of crops," Dr Boden says.

From here he said he expected breeders would be able to work with the gene targets of Ppd-1 and utilise genetic diversity within wheat species to design better yielding genotypes.

"The knowledge gained will inform breeders about gene targets of Ppd-1, for which we can use genetic diversity to design genotypes that might yield better."

Dr Boden's research team is now furthering its work with field trials at the University's Research Enclosure to test for performance of the gene-edited lines under field conditions.