December 11, 2003
The secret of flowering in our
major food crops, like wheat, has been revealed with the
discovery of a gene that triggers flowering in cereals.
Flowering is important because
without it no grain or fruit would be produced.
The newly found gene, called
WAP1, turns ‘on’ to activate flowering in cereals like wheat and
barley, when the plant is at the right stage of development and
when environmental conditions are suitable.
In winter wheat, WAP1 and
flowering are activated after a cold period over winter. Spring
wheat, however, flowers without exposure to cold because its
version of WAP1 does not require a cold period to start it.
“Different flowering times in
wheat are one of the key traits that wheat breeders have bred
for since wheat breeding began,” says Dr Ben Trevaskis, CSIRO
Plant Industry.
“This breakthrough discovery of
WAP1 means a piece of the flowering puzzle has been found. It
helps us understand what breeders have been manipulating, but
there is still a lot of work ahead to fully unravel the
flowering process.”
In the future knowledge of WAP1
could be used to help breed cereal plants that flower when
needed.
The discovery of WAP1 has been
simultaneously confirmed in the USA and Canada where scientists
have independently identified the same gene for cereal
flowering. |