Department of Crop and Forest Sciences, University of Lleida - AGROTECNIO Center, Av. R. Roure 191, 25198 Lleida, Spain; Secció de Fisiologia Vegetal, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, and AGROTECNIO Center, Lleida, Spain.
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam, Germany.
Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2020 Aug;56:223-234. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2020.01.001. Epub 2020 Feb 19.
Small grain cereals such as wheat, rice and barley are among the most important crops worldwide. Any attempt to increase crop productivity and stability through breeding implies developing new strategies for plant phenotyping, including defining ideotype attributes for selection. Recently, the role of non-foliar photosynthetic organs, particularly the inflorescences, has received increasing attention. For example, ear photosynthesis has been reported to be a major contributor to grain filling in wheat and barley under stress and good agronomic conditions. This review provides an overview of the particular characteristics of the ear that makes this photosynthetic organ better adapted to grain filling than the flag leaf and revises potential metabolic and molecular traits that merit further research as targets for cereal improvement. Currently, the absence of high-throughput phenotyping methods limits the inclusion of ear photosynthesis in the breeding agenda. In this regard, a number of different approaches are presented.
小粒谷物，如小麦、水稻和大麦，是全球最重要的作物之一。任何通过育种提高作物生产力和稳定性的尝试都意味着要开发新的植物表型策略，包括为选择定义理想型特征。最近，非叶光合器官，特别是花序的作用，受到了越来越多的关注。例如，已经有报道称，在胁迫和良好的农艺条件下，小麦和大麦的穗光合作用是籽粒灌浆的主要贡献者。本文综述了穗的特殊特征，使这个光合器官比旗叶更能适应籽粒灌浆，并修正了可能的代谢和分子特征，这些特征值得作为谷物改良的研究目标。目前，高通量表型分析方法的缺乏限制了穗光合作用在育种议程中的纳入。在这方面，提出了许多不同的方法。
