Enhancing grain size in durum wheat using RNAi to knock-down GW2 genes
Author(s)
Date Issued
2019
Type
article
Volume
132
Start Page
419
End Page
429
ISSN
0040-5752
Journal
Abstract
Raising crop yield is a priority task in the light of the continuing growth of the world’s population and the inexorable loss of arable land to urbanization. Here, the RNAi approach was taken to reduce the abundance of GW2 transcript in the durum wheat cultivar Svevo. The effect of the knock-down was to increase the grains’ starch content by 10-40%, their width by 4-13% and their surface area by 3-5%. Transcriptomic profiling, based on a quantitative real time PCR platform, revealed that the transcript abundance of genes encoding both cytokinin dehydrogenase 1 and the large subunit of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase was markedly increased in the transgenic lines, whereas that of the genes encoding cytokinin dehydrogenase 2 and gibberellin 3-oxidase was reduced. A proteomic analysis of the non-storage fraction extracted from mature grains detected that some seven proteins were differentially represented in the transgenic compared to wild type grain: some of these were involved in, or at least potentially involved in cell wall development, suggesting a role of GW2 in the regulation of cell division in the wheat grain.
Subjects
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