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ARS Home » Plains Area » Lubbock, Texas » Cropping Systems Research Laboratory » Wind Erosion and Water Conservation Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #345546
Title: Description of a novel allelic “thick leafed” mutant of sorghum

Author
item Gitz, Dennis
item Liu Gitz, Lan
item Xin, Zhanguo
item Baker, Jeffrey
item Payton, Paxton
item Lascano, Robert

Submitted to: American Journal of Plant Sciences
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/7/2017
Publication Date: 11/13/2017
Citation: Gitz, D.C., Liu Gitz, L., Xin, Z., Baker, J.T., Payton, P.R., Lascano, R.J. 2017. Description of a novel allelic “thick leafed” mutant of sorghum. American Journal of Plant Sciences. 8:2956-2965.

Interpretive Summary: As water for irrigation is depleted, producers will need to switch to more drought tolerant crops. Sorghum is an important drought tolerant alternative crop that can be grown in semi-arid environments. However, monetary return in sorghum is low as compared to other irrigated crops. Also, controlling emerging pests such as the sugar cane aphid force growers to spray with insecticides which raises the amount of money spent on crop production and lowers profitability. We developed a mutant sorghum that has thick narrow leaves. Incorporation of this trait into breeding programs might result in sorghum with even greater drought resistance and sugar cane aphid resistance.

Technical Abstract: An allelic sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] mutant with thick and narrow erect leaves (thl) and reduced adaxial stomatal density was isolated from the Annotated Individually pedigreed Mutagenized Sorghum (AIMS) mutant library developed at the Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Unit at Lubbock, TX. The mutant, thl, was isolated from a pedigreed M3 family generated by ethyl methanesulfonate mutagenization from an elite inbred sorghum line, BTx623, that had been used to sequence the sorghum genome. The mutant has been backcrossed to the wild-type BTx623 confirming that the trait results from a stable recessive nuclear gene mutation. Herein we briefly describe morphological and selected physiological characteristics of this mutant sorghum.