A domestication gene links plant architecture and nitrogen metabolism to enhance yield in foxtail millet.
Wang C, Zhao K, Zhang H, Xu C, Xu Y
Crop Improvement
Foxtail millet — the drought-tough ancient grain making a quiet comeback in heritage seed catalogs — just got a genetic upgrade that could let small-scale growers harvest significantly more grain from the same plot without extra fertilizer.
Scientists found a single gene in foxtail millet that acts like a master switch controlling both how tall a plant grows and how well it uses nitrogen from the soil. When a plant inherits one 'dialed-down' copy of this gene from one parent and one normal copy from the other, it hits a sweet spot — the right height, more side stems for extra seed heads, and better nutrient uptake — all adding up to a bigger harvest. This same gene tweak turns out to have been quietly selected by farmers over thousands of years of cultivation, and breeders can now deliberately harness it to engineer reliably high-yielding hybrid seeds.
Key Findings
A single gene, SiSD1, controls both plant architecture (height and tillering via gibberellin hormones) and nitrogen metabolism simultaneously — a rare two-for-one in crop genetics.
Hybrid millet plants heterozygous for SiSD1/sisd1 outperform both parent lines in yield, a phenomenon confirmed across elite commercial hybrids including the high-yield Zhangzagu series.
A single amino acid change (D157E) in SiSD1 compared to wild foxtail millet ancestors reduces gibberellin production and was positively selected during crop domestication, linking ancient farmer selection to modern breeding targets.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers identified a single gene in foxtail millet — SiSD1 — that simultaneously governs plant height and nitrogen use efficiency. Plants carrying one functional and one non-functional copy of this gene produce more stems, stay at an ideal height, and absorb nitrogen better, yielding significantly more grain than either pure parent line.
Abstract Preview
Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) has lagged in yield compared with major cereals, largely due to suboptimal architecture. Here, we report a telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genome assembly of the dwarf, ...
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Foxtail millet, scientific name Setaria italica, is an annual grass grown for human food. It is the second-most widely planted species of millet and the most grown millet species in Asia. The oldest evidence of foxtail millet cultivation was found along the ancient course of the Yellow River in C...