Abstract
Genetic improvement of native crops is a new and promising strategy to combat hunger in the developing world. Tef is the major staple food crop for approximately 50 million people in Ethiopia. As an indigenous cereal, it is well adapted to diverse climatic and soil conditions; however, its productivity is extremely low mainly due to susceptibility to lodging. Tef has a tall and weak stem, liable to lodge (or fall over), which is aggravated by wind, rain, or application of nitrogen fertilizer. To circumvent this problem, the first semi-dwarf lodging-tolerant tef line, called kegne, was developed from an ethyl methanesulphonate (EMS)-mutagenized population. The response of kegne to microtubule-depolymerizing and -stabilizing drugs, as well as subsequent gene sequencing and segregation analysis, suggests that a defect in the α-Tubulin gene is functionally and genetically tightly linked to the kegne phenotype. In diploid species such as rice, homozygous mutations in α-Tubulin genes result in extreme dwarfism and weak stems. In the allotetraploid tef, only one homeologue is mutated, and the presence of the second intact α-Tubulin gene copy confers the agriculturally beneficial semi-dwarf and lodging-tolerant phenotype. Introgression of kegne into locally adapted and popular tef cultivars in Ethiopia will increase the lodging tolerance in the tef germplasm and, as a result, will improve the productivity of this valuable crop.
Highlights
Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] belongs to the family of Poaceae and is a C4, self-pollinated, and allotetraploid plant species
A tef mutant with a helical phenotype was identified from an ethyl methanesulphonate (EMS)-mutagenized M2 population of the improved tef cultivar DZ-Cr-37
The helical phenotype of kegne was pronounced in dark-grown coleoptiles (Fig. 1C, D), with cells tilting off the vertical axis on average by ~12 ° compared with only 2 ° in the wild type (WT) (Fig. 1E)
Summary
Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] belongs to the family of Poaceae (subfamily Chloridoideae) and is a C4, self-pollinated, and allotetraploid plant species. As the most important cereal crop in Ethiopia, tef is cultivated annually on 2.8 million ha of land, ~29% of the area allocated to cereals (CSA, 2011). Tef is a resilient crop that performs better than other cereals under local conditions including drought, waterlogging, and poor soil. Since it produces a reasonable yield when grown in areas that experience moisture scarcity, it is considered as a low risk crop (Ketema, 1997). Despite its versatility in adapting to adverse environmental conditions and being the staple food for ~50 million people in Abbreviations: BL, brassinolide; BR, brassinosteroid; BSA, Bovine Serum Albumin; CAPS, Cleaved Amplified Polymorphic Sequence; CDS, Coding sequence; CSA, Central Statistical Agency (Ethiopia); DMSO, dimethylsufoxide; EMS, ethyl methanesulphonate; FITC, Fluorescein isothiocyanate; GA, gibberellic acid; IAA, indole-3-acetic acid; MAP, microtubule-associated protein; MS, Murashige and Skoog; MTSB, microtubule-stabilizing buffer; NPA, n-1-naphthylphthalamic acid; PBS, phosphate-buffered saline; SEM, scanning electron microscope
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