description
- Wheat provides about one-fifth of our daily calorie and protein intake and, as a main food security crop, it is essential to maintain and increase wheat production to meet growing global food demands. The number of grains formed in each wheat spike is the most important determinant of yield. Wheat plants adjust their growth and development according to the amount of carbon and energy resources available to them. This is an important strategy in the wild, allowing plants to ration their energy conservatively, but is less useful in agriculture, where our goal is to maximise grain production. Plants have elaborate detection and signalling mechanisms that allow them to measure and respond to their available energy levels. Our research project aims to understand these signalling pathways and understand how subtle changes in these systems could be used to help develop plants that produce more grains per spike. One important factor limiting grain number is the availability of sugar. We identified a group of genes involved in a sugar signalling pathway that play important roles in regulating floral development in different plant species. We used genome editing to develop wheat plants carrying non-functional versions of these genes. These plants showed unusual spike shapes and altered development, demonstrating that these genes are essential regulators of wheat spike development. In our research project, we will study these mutant plants to help us understand how wheat plants coordinate spike growth and development with their available carbon and energy. We will precisely define each gene's contribution to spike development and use molecular assays to determine how these genes affect wheat spike growth and how they interact with other genes acting in the same pathway to control this trait. This knowledge may direct gene editing or selection of natural variants to increase grain number for yield improvement.