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 #416922
Research Project: Genetic Improvement of Sorghum Traits that Advance Agricultural Productivity and Climate Resilience

Location: Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Research

Title: A dominant multiple tiller mutant that dramatically increases biomass and grain yield in sorghum

Author
item Pugh, Nicholas - Ace
item Chen, Junping
item TIAN, RAN - Texas Tech University
item JIAO, YINPING - Texas Tech University
item Burow, Gloria
item Hayes, Chad
item Sattler, Scott
item Xin, Zhanguo

Submitted to: ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/13/2024
Publication Date: 4/2/2024
Citation: Pugh, N.A., Chen, J., Tian, R., Jiao, Y., Burow, G.B., Hayes, C.M., Sattler, S.E., Xin, Z. 2024. A dominant multiple tiller mutant that dramatically increases biomass and grain yield in sorghum. ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Dominant mutants are rare, especially from chemically induced mutagenesis. Here, we present a dominant multiple tiller mutant isolated from the pedigreed sorghum mutant library. In grain sorghum, tillers are generally considered to be an undesirable agronomic trait because most sorghum lines develop tillers in late growth stages, and these tillers usually don’t produce harvestable seeds. They are often referred to as “sucker tillers” because they compete for the plant’s resources but do not contribute to yield. However, sorghum lines with effective tillers (produce normal biomass and/or seeds) are a desirable trait for bioenergy sorghum and grain sorghum. In this study, we report the characterization of a dominant multiple tiller mutant (mtl-D1) that can produce several effective tillers at very early developmental stages, all of which have normal sized panicles and produce normal amounts of seeds. The mutant has a relatively long period of vegetative growth and flowers two weeks later than the parental inbred line, BTx623. Our two-location and multi-year field study showed that the mutant can produce up to 50% and 30% more biomass and grain, respectively, when conditions are optimal. The dominant nature of the multiple tiller trait makes the mtl-D1 an ideal parent to breed mtl-sorghum hybrids with great potential to significantly increase biomass and grain production. Provisional hybrids have been created between mtl-D1 and grain, biomass, sweet, and forage sorghum inbred lines. Their performance in the field will be presented.