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Natural variation in Ghd7 is an important regulator of heading date and yield potential in rice

Nature Genetics volume 40, pages 761–767 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Yield potential, plant height and heading date are three classes of traits that determine the productivity of many crop plants. Here we show that the quantitative trait locus (QTL) Ghd7, isolated from an elite rice hybrid and encoding a CCT domain protein, has major effects on an array of traits in rice, including number of grains per panicle, plant height and heading date. Enhanced expression of Ghd7 under long-day conditions delays heading and increases plant height and panicle size. Natural mutants with reduced function enable rice to be cultivated in temperate and cooler regions. Thus, Ghd7 has played crucial roles for increasing productivity and adaptability of rice globally.

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Figure 1: Performance of Zhenshan 97 and NIL(mh7) planted under natural long-day conditions.
Figure 2: Diurnal expression patterns of NIL(mh7) and NIL(zs7) as indicated by quantitative RT-PCR results.
Figure 3: Expression of Ghd7 in various tissues detected by in situ hybridization with an antisense probe using various tissues of Minghui 63.
Figure 4: Effects of Ghd7 on the stem.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Chua and M. Matsuoka (Nagoya University) for helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript, and J.B. Wang for field management. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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Author notes

  1. Weiya Xue and Yongzhong Xing: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, National Centre of Plant Gene Research (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Weiya Xue, Yongzhong Xing, Xiaoyu Weng, Yu Zhao, Weijiang Tang, Lei Wang, Hongju Zhou, Sibin Yu, Caiguo Xu, Xianghua Li & Qifa Zhang

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Contributions

W.X., Y.X., W.T., C.X. and X.L. conducted genetic mapping, gene cloning and data collection; X.W. and L.W. conducted expression analysis; Y.Z. conducted the in situ hybridization; H.Z. and S.Y. conducted NIL development; Y.X. and Q.Z. designed and supervised the study; and Q.Z. analyzed the data and wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qifa Zhang.

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Xue, W., Xing, Y., Weng, X. et al. Natural variation in Ghd7 is an important regulator of heading date and yield potential in rice. Nat Genet 40, 761–767 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.143

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