[en] Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a staple food crop consumed by more than 30% of world population. Nitrogen (N) fertilizer has been applied broadly in agriculture practice to improve wheat yield to meet the growing demands for food production. However, undue N fertilizer application and the low N use efficiency (NUE) of modern wheat varieties are aggravating environmental pollution and ecological deterioration. Under nitrogen-limiting conditions, the rice (Oryza sativa) abnormal cytokinin response1 repressor1 (are1) mutant exhibits increased NUE, delayed senescence and consequently, increased grain yield. However, the function of ARE1 ortholog in wheat remains unknown. Here, we isolated and characterized three TaARE1 homoeologs from the elite Chinese winter wheat cultivar ZhengMai 7698. We then used CRISPR/Cas9-mediated targeted mutagenesis to generate a series of transgene-free mutant lines either with partial or triple-null taare1 alleles. All transgene-free mutant lines showed enhanced tolerance to N starvation, and showed delayed senescence and increased grain yield in field conditions. In particular, the AABBdd and aabbDD mutant lines exhibited delayed senescence and significantly increased grain yield without growth defects compared to the wild-type control. Together, our results underscore the potential to manipulate ARE1 orthologs through gene editing for breeding of high-yield wheat as well as other cereal crops with improved NUE.
Disciplines :
Agriculture & agronomy
Author, co-author :
Zhang, Jiahui ; Université de Liège - ULiège > TERRA Research Centre ; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
Zhang, Huating; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China ; School of Agricultural Sciences, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China
Li, Shaoya; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
Li, Jingying; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
Yan, Lei; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
Xia, Lanqin; Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
Language :
English
Title :
Increasing yield potential through manipulating of an ARE1 ortholog related to nitrogen use efficiency in wheat by CRISPR/Cas9.
We thank Prof. Jianru Zuo for sharing unpublished data. We apologize to those whose work we were unable to cite due to space and reference limitations. This work is funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFE0202300), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (CAAS‐ZDRW202109), Fundamental Research Funds for Central Non‐Profit of Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (S2021ZD03), and National Engineering Laboratory of Crop Molecular Breeding.We thank Prof. Jianru Zuo for sharing unpublished data. We apologize to those whose work we were unable to cite due to space and reference limitations. This work is funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFE0202300), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (CAAS-ZDRW202109), Fundamental Research Funds for Central Non-Profit of Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (S2021ZD03), and National Engineering Laboratory of Crop Molecular Breeding.
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