Furbank Robert T, Sharwood Robert, Estavillo Gonzalo M, Silva-Perez Viridiana, Condon Anthony G
ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
J Exp Bot. 2020 Apr 6;71(7):2226-2238. doi: 10.1093/jxb/eraa077.
Photosynthesis has become a major trait of interest for cereal yield improvement as breeders appear to have reached the theoretical genetic limit for harvest index, the mass of grain as a proportion of crop biomass. Yield improvements afforded by the adoption of green revolution dwarfing genes to wheat and rice are becoming exhausted, and improvements in biomass and radiation use efficiency are now sought in these crops. Exploring genetic diversity in photosynthesis is now possible using high-throughput techniques, and low-cost genotyping facilitates discovery of the genetic architecture underlying this variation. Photosynthetic traits have been shown to be highly heritable, and significant variation is present for these traits in available germplasm. This offers hope that breeding for improved photosynthesis and radiation use efficiency in cereal crops is tractable and a useful shorter term adjunct to genetic and genome engineering to boost yield potential.
光合作用已成为提高谷物产量的一个主要关注性状，因为育种者似乎已达到收获指数（即籽粒重量占作物生物量的比例）的理论遗传极限。通过采用绿色革命矮秆基因来提高小麦和水稻产量的效果正在逐渐耗尽，目前正在寻求提高这些作物的生物量和辐射利用效率。现在利用高通量技术探索光合作用中的遗传多样性成为可能，低成本基因分型有助于发现这种变异背后的遗传结构。光合性状已被证明具有高度遗传性，并且在现有种质中这些性状存在显著变异。这给人们带来了希望，即对谷类作物进行光合作用和辐射利用效率改良的育种是可行的，并且是在短期内助力遗传和基因组工程提高产量潜力的有用辅助手段。
