The team estimates that the new variety could be available in just a few years. It could help to optimize the important bread grain and improve world nutrition.
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the most important staple foods worldwide: It provides around 20 percent of the protein and calories consumed worldwide – more than any other food. But the increasing heat and drought are affecting the bread grain, and crop failures are increasing. The war in Ukraine has also led to supply bottlenecks. It is therefore important for world nutrition to develop more resilient and nutritious wheat varieties.
However, because the wheat genome is huge and extremely complex, it has so far been difficult to identify the gene variants that have a positive effect on the components and growth of the grain. Only since the wheat genome was decoded in 2018 have new possibilities opened up.
Laura Dixon from the John Innes Center in Norwich, UK, and her team have now also seized this opportunity. They examined gene variants that produce “paired spikelets” in wheat. Two spikelets sprout from a rachis node of the spike – the normal one and a second floret directly underneath.
Using genetic analyses, the researchers determined which mutations produce such paired spikelets and which of these have potentially promising effects on the yield and nutrient content of the wheat.
In fact, Dixon and her colleagues found what they were looking for: They identified a mutation in the “Homebox Domain 2” (HB2) gene of the wheat genome that causes both paired spikelets and increases the protein content of the wheat grains, as breeding experiments in the laboratory have shown. In order to test whether this is also the case outdoors, the scientists carried out a comparative field test with the new variety, called ps1, and common wheat varieties.
The result: “The ps1 plants grew even better in the field than in the greenhouse,” reports the team. The new variety grew similar in height to the reference plants, flowered and matured at the same time, and produced as many ears and grains of wheat.
However, the analysis of the grains showed that they contained around 25 percent more protein than those of the reference variety. The level of free amino acids, including the essential methionine, leucine and threonine, was also higher.
Also important: “This increase in protein content does not come at the expense of yield, so in addition to the increased nutrient content, this discovery is also economical for breeders and farmers,” says senior author Scott Boden of the University of Adelaide. “We also hope that with further breeding we will develop variants that also bring more yield.”
According to the researchers, the discovery of this gene variant now opens up new possibilities for breeding more nutritious and perhaps also higher-yielding wheat varieties. “This could help produce grains with higher nutrient levels for bread and cereals, thus benefiting the nutritional supply,” Boden said.
The research team estimates that the new wheat varieties based on this gene variant will be available to breeders in two to three years and can then be used by farmers in seven to ten years.
Quelle: University of AdelaideDieser
Article was written by Nadja Podbregar
The original of this article “Up to 25 percent more protein: Gene variant makes wheat more nutritious” comes from scinexx.
