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Pleiotropic effects of the semi-dwarfing gene uzu in barley

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Abstract

The adoption of reduced height (Rht) genes has dramatically enhanced yield potential of cereal crops. The semi-dwarfing gene uzu in barley is widely used in East Asia. Its value as an Rht gene in the warm and dry environments in Australia was evaluated in this study. In addition to plant height, this gene showed significant effects on a wide range of characteristics. It reduced the overall plant height by an average of 33.7 % with the most significant reduction occurred on the internode below the peduncle. The gene reduces spike length by 31.6 % and grain weight by 18.8 %. It increases grain number per spike by 5.6 % and grain density by 51.8 %. Seedling assays suggested that the effects of this gene became more significant with increased temperature. It reduced coleoptile and seedling length by 19.4 % and 15.1 %, respectively at 7 °C. The reduction increased to 61 % and 46.7 %, respectively, at 25 °C. These results indicated that the uzu gene could have limited values in some high temperature and drought prone environments.

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Acknowledgments

This publication is based upon work supported by CSIRO (Project R-04818) and the International Science & Cooperation Program of China (No. 2015DFA30600). GC thanks the China Scholarship Council for funding his visit to CSIRO. The authors are also grateful to Caritta Eliasson for her technical assistance.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. CSIRO Agriculture, 306 Carmody Road, St Lucia, QLD, 4067, Australia

      Guangdeng Chen, Haobing Li & Chunji Liu

    2. Triticeae Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Wenjiang, Chengdu, 611130, China

      Guangdeng Chen, Yuming Wei & You-Liang Zheng

    3. Institute of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, Sichuan Agricultural University, Wenjiang, Chengdu, 611130, China

      Guangdeng Chen

    4. Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources, 110 Natimuk Road, Horsham, VIC, 3400, Australia

      Haobing Li

    5. Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture and School of Land and Food, University of Tasmania, P.O. Box 46, Kings Meadows, TAS, 7250, Australia

      Meixue Zhou

    6. School of Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia

      Chunji Liu

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    1. Guangdeng Chen
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    Correspondence to Chunji Liu.

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    Guangdeng Chen and Haobing Li have contributed equally to this work.

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    Chen, G., Li, H., Wei, Y. et al. Pleiotropic effects of the semi-dwarfing gene uzu in barley. Euphytica 209, 749–755 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-016-1668-4

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-016-1668-4

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