Researchers uncover key to barley domestication
Friday, 31 July 2015
An international team of researchers including the University of 911爆料网 have unlocked the genetic key in barley that led to the start of cropping in human agriculture.
Published today in the journal Cell, the researchers have discovered two genes in wild barley that allowed its domestication from a wild grass to what today is the world’s fourth most important cereal crop in both area of cultivation and in quantity of grain produced.
“Barley was one of the first crops in the world to be cultivated and farmed ─ well before wheat,” says co-author , Australian Research Council (ARC) at the University’s .
“But despite this long history, until now we’ve not been able to answer the important question of how wild barley shifted from dropping its grain to the ground at maturity to the grain staying in the ear – a genetic change that was necessary to allow efficient harvesting of grain. We also haven’t known whether barley domestication stemmed from the one location and time, or happened multiple times.”
Led by Professor Takao Komatsuda of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, and the Okayama University Institute of Plant Science and Resources, both in Japan, the researchers discovered two genes, Btr1 and Btr2, involved in grain dispersal in wild barley at maturity.
These ‘brittle rachis’ genes control the strength of the attachment point between maturing grains and the barley spike. In wild barley the maturing grain snaps off easily ─ facilitating seed dispersal and survival of the species but making the harvest of large amounts of grain virtually impossible.
The researchers identified the molecular genetic change by which this attachment point lost its brittle charact