Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Lubbock, Texas » Cropping Systems Research Laboratory » Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #309442
Title: Registration of two allelic erect leaf mutants of sorghum

Author
item Xin, Zhanguo
item Gitz, Dennis
item Burow, Gloria
item Hayes, Chad
item Burke, John

Submitted to: Journal of Plant Registrations
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/1/2015
Publication Date: 4/10/2015
Citation: Xin, Z., Gitz, D.C., Burow, G.B., Hayes, C.M., Burke, J.J. 2015. Registration of two allelic erect leaf mutants of sorghum. Journal of Plant Registrations. 9:254-257.

Interpretive Summary: Erect leaf is an important architecture trait that drives the continuous yield gains for maize hybrids released since the Green Revolution launched in 1960s. This traihas been also demonstrated beneficial in rice and other crops species. Due to lack of appropriate germplasm, sorghum leaf architecture is primarily flat or drooping. Here, we registered two allelic sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] erect leaf (erl) mutants isolated from an Annotated Individually-pedigreed Mutagenized Sorghum (AIMS) mutant library developed at the Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Unit, at Lubbock, Texas. The two mutants, erl1-1 and erl1-2, were isolated from two independently pedigreed M3 families mutagenized with ethyl methanesulfonate in a leading sorghum inbred line, BTx623, which was used to sequence the sorghum genome. Both mutants have been backcrossed three times to the wild-type (WT) BTx623 and shown to be a stable recessive mutation on a nuclear gene. The F1 plants from the reciprocal crosses between the two mutants displayed the erect leaf phenotype, indicating the mutations that result in the erect leaf phenotype from the two mutants are on a same gene. Both mutants have upright leaves and slightly short leaves and reduced height. The panicles from both mutants are smaller than WT even after three backcrosses. As a highly penetrant trait mediated by a single gene, these mutants may serve as a novel resource to design canopy architecture for optimizing radiation capture and use to increase biomass and grain yield.

Technical Abstract: Two allelic sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] erect leaf (erl) mutants were isolated from an Annotated Individually-pedigreed Mutagenized Sorghum (AIMS) mutant library developed at the Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Unit, at Lubbock, Texas. The two mutants, erl1-1 and erl1-2, were isolated from two independently pedigreed M3 families mutagenized with ethyl methanesulfonate in a leading sorghum inbred line, BTx623, which was used to sequence the sorghum genome. Both mutants have been backcrossed three times to the wild-type (WT) BTx623 and shown to be a stable recessive mutation on a nuclear gene. The F1 plants from the reciprocal crosses between the two mutants displayed the erect leaf phenotype, indicating the mutations that result in the erect leaf phenotype from the two mutants are on a same gene. Both mutants have upright leaves and slightly short leaves and reduced height. The panicles from both mutants are smaller than WT even after three backcrosses. As a highly penetrant trait mediated by a single gene, these mutants may serve as a novel resource to design canopy architecture for optimizing radiation capture and use to increase biomass and grain yield.