Broken barley gene turns husks orange and cuts tough plant fiber
Sato K, Morita M, Yamaji N, Kako R, Ushijima T
Crispr
Barley straw piled behind a farm or brewed into compost breaks down faster when its lignin is low, and this discovery hands plant breeders a precise genetic target to make that happen by design.
Barley plants sometimes grow with orange-colored husks instead of the usual golden ones, and scientists have long wondered why. Researchers found that this color change happens when a gene called CAD is broken; that gene normally helps the plant build lignin, the tough woody stuff that holds plant cell walls together. Without working CAD, lignin levels drop and the husks turn orange, which turns out to be a useful trait for making straw easier to digest for livestock or to ferment into ethanol.
Key Findings
The CAD gene on chromosome 6H is the sole cause of the orange lemma phenotype in barley, confirmed across naturally occurring mutants, EMS-induced lines, and CRISPR knockout plants.
CRISPR/Cas9 knockout of CAD in the 'Golden Promise' cultivar reproduced the orange husk color and produced significantly lower lignin content than wild-type plants.
All orange lemma mutants carried nucleotide changes in CAD resulting in amino acid substitutions or premature stop codons, explaining decades of observed phenotypic variation.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists identified the gene behind barley's 'orange lemma' mutation, a long-mysterious color change in husks. The culprit is CAD, an enzyme that helps build lignin; when it's broken, husks turn orange and lignin drops, making the grain and straw easier to digest and convert to biofuel.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD) underlies the orange lemma trait and lignin reduction in barley.
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the world's major cereal crops and is widely used for feed, brewing, and food. Reducing lignin content in barley grain and straw is beneficial for improving fo...
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