Timing is everything: early degradation of abscission layer is associated with increased seed shattering in U.S. weedy rice.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Seed shattering, or shedding, is an important fitness trait for wild and weedy grasses. U.S. weedy rice (Oryza sativa) is a highly shattering weed, thought to have evolved from non-shattering cultivated ancestors. All U.S. weedy rice individuals examined to date contain a mutation in the sh4 locus associated with loss of shattering during rice domestication. Weedy individuals also share the shattering trait with wild rice, but not the ancestral shattering mutation at sh4; thus, how weedy rice reacquired the shattering phenotype is unknown. To establish the morphological basis of the parallel evolution of seed shattering in weedy rice and wild, we examined the abscission layer at the flower-pedicel junction in weedy individuals in comparison with wild and cultivated relat

SUBMITTER: Thurber CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3025945 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature