Abstract
SummaryOne of the primary objectives of wheat breeding was to increase grain yield. Floral abortion during the stem elongation phase (SEP) leads to a loss of more than 50% of the grain number potential. In this study, we quantified 75 plant growth‐associated traits at seven stages during the SEP and mapped 15 696 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in 210 accessions of wheat (Triticum aestivum). Our genomewide association study identified trait‐associated SNPs that are shared among various stages of the SEP, as well as SNPs that are shared between plant growth traits and grain yield in the field. The genomic selection analysis shows variation among the prediction abilities of various traits and stages. Furthermore, we found that the allelic variants of Ppd‐D1 (chromosome 2D) and Rht‐D1 (chromosome 4D) loci affect some plant growth traits (e.g. leaf area and spike length). These results have identified a narrow time window within the SEP in which plant growth traits can be manipulated to alter grain yield. This suggests that there may be multiple ways to regulate plant growth during the SEP, to ultimately influence grain number in wheat.
Highlights
World food security is a serious and pressing contemporary issue (Godfray et al, 2010; Grassini et al, 2013; Schmidhuber and Tubiello, 2007; Tilman et al, 2011)
Fewer than 50% of the floret primordia survive to develop into fertile florets at anthesis, so that most of the grain yield potential is lost during the stem elongation phase (SEP, Figure 1)
The results presented in this study will be useful for designing strategies to increase floret fertility by selecting plant growth traits with yield-relevant effects during the SEP
Summary
World food security is a serious and pressing contemporary issue (Godfray et al, 2010; Grassini et al, 2013; Schmidhuber and Tubiello, 2007; Tilman et al, 2011). Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is an important crop that provides 55% of the carbohydrates and 20% of the calories consumed by people worldwide (Breiman and Graur, 1995). An individual wheat spike generally consists of 20–30 spikelets, and an individual spikelet generally contains 2–4 grains at physiological maturity. The indeterminate nature of wheat spikelets enables the formation of 8–12 floret primordia within each spikelet, which is referred to as the grain number potential (Ferrante et al, 2013; Gonzalez et al, 2011; Guo and Schnurbusch, 2015). Fewer than 50% of the floret primordia survive to develop into fertile florets at anthesis, so that most of the grain yield potential is lost during the stem elongation phase (SEP, Figure 1)
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