A genome resource for green millet Setaria viridis enables discovery of agronomically valuable loci
Abstract
Wild and weedy relatives of domesticated crops harbor genetic variants that can advance agricultural biotechnology. Here we provide a genome resource for the wild plant green millet (Setaria viridis), a model species for studies of C4 grasses, and use the resource to probe domestication genes in the close crop relative foxtail millet (Setaria italica). We produced a platinum-quality genome assembly of S. viridis and de novo assemblies for 598 wild accessions and exploited these assemblies to identify loci underlying three traits: response to climate, a ‘loss of shattering’ trait that permits mechanical harvest and leaf angle, a predictor of yield in many grass crops. With CRISPR–Cas9 genome editing, we validated Less Shattering1 (SvLes1) as a gene whose product controls seed shattering. In S. italica, this gene was rendered nonfunctional by a retrotransposon insertion in the domesticated loss-of-shattering allele SiLes1-TE (transposable element). This resource will enhance the utility of S. viridis for dissection of complex traits and biotechnological improvement of panicoid crops.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41587-020-0681-2
Entities
People
- Adam Healey
- Avinash Sreedasyam
- Cindy Chen
- Dmitri A. Nusinow
- Elizabeth Anne Kellogg
- Hitoshi Sakakibara
- Ivan Baxter
- Jane Grimwood
- Jenifer Johnson
- Jeremy Schmutz
- Jerry Jenkins
- Jinxia Wu
- John T. Lovell
- Kerrie Barry
- Maximilian Feldman
- Pu Huang
- Rachel Tavares
- Shengqiang Shu
- Sujan Mamidi
- Takatoshi Kiba
- Tetsuya Sakurai
- Thomas Brutnell
- Yunqing Yu
Organizations
- National Science Foundation
- United States Department of Defense
- United States Department of Energy