The Chinese Academy of Sciences uses gene editing to develop disease-resistant and high-yield wheat, and the research results are published in Nature.

As the saying goes, the people take food as the sky. As one of the most important staple food crops, wheat provides an energy source for more than one-third of the population, and its yield and quality are directly related to world food security. However, the growth of wheat is often affected by pests and diseases. Among them, powdery mildew caused by fungal infections is one of the major threats facing wheat worldwide.

On February 9, Chinese scientists published a research paper in the top journal "Nature", which elucidated the molecular mechanism of the new mlo mutant of wheat that is both resistant to powdery mildew and high yield, and through genome editing, accurately controlled the genetic alleles of the susceptibility gene MLO in the main wheat varieties, and quickly obtained a broad spectrum of powdery mildew resistant and high-yield new germplasm.

As early as 2014, Gao Caixia's team at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Qiu Jinlong's team from the Institute of Microbiology used genome editing technology to direct the disease-sensitive gene MLO of mutated wheat to obtain materials with broad-spectrum and durable resistance to powdery mildew, demonstrating the application potential of genome editing in complex genome crop breeding. However, as has been observed in a variety of other plants, the study found that wheat mlo mutants exhibiting powdery mildew resistance are accompanied by negative phenotypes such as premature aging, plant shorterness, and decreased yields, which may limit their application in production.

In the new study, the researchers screened a new mlo mutant, Tamlo-R32, through a large number of genome-edited wheat mutants. This mutant exhibits complete resistance to powdery mildew while growing and developing normally and yielding normally. After eight years of collaboration, the researchers finally analyzed the molecular mechanism of wheat Tamlo-R32 mutant phenotype formation, and found that there was a large deletion of about 304Kb near the TaMLO-B1 locus of the Tamlo-R32 mutant genome, and the change of the three-dimensional structure of the chromosome led to an increase in the expression level of the upstream gene TaTMT3, thus overcoming the negative phenotype caused by the MLO mutation of the disease-sensitive gene, and finally achieving a win-win situation of disease resistance and yield.

In order to apply the research results to disease resistance breeding, researchers used traditional breeding methods to cross Tamlo-R32 mutants with the main wheat cultivars in mainland China, and introduced excellent disease resistance traits into the main cultivars through several generations of backcrossing. More importantly, using CRISPR genome editing technology, the corresponding genetic mutations can be created directly in the main wheat cultivars, and the new wheat germplasm with broad-spectrum powdery mildew resistance and unaffected growth and yield in multiple wheat main cultivars was successfully obtained in only 2-3 months.

Compared with traditional breeding methods, genome editing breeding greatly shortens the breeding process. This study is an important progress in wheat powdery mildew resistance breeding, which fully demonstrates the application prospect of genome editing in modern agricultural production, and provides a new strategy and technical route for breeding disease-resistant and high-yield crop varieties.

The research paper, titled "Genome-edited powdery mildew resistance in wheat without growth penalties," has been published in the journal Nature.

Forward-looking Economist APP Information Group

Original text: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04395-9

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