Modifying inflorescences with higher grain capacity is vital for crop grain production. One recurring target is to select inflorescences with more branches or floral structures. Prominent examples include genes affecting floral identity or meristem determinacy, for which natural or induced variants profoundly change floral primordium number. Yet for temperate cereal crops, such as wheat and barley, excessive floral structures can result in a degeneration penalty due to the indeterminate nature of meristems. On the other hand, the manifestation of this reproductive potential can be accentuated by environmental fluctuations such as light, temperature and nutrition. Increasing the fraction of surviving florets/spikelets may thus improve grain yield in cereals.
Click here for original story, IPK researchers provide insights into grain number determination mechanism of barley
Source: Phys.org