Abstract
The shattering habit of rice has been modified by artificial selection during the domestication. Histochemical observation revealed that the major QTL for shattering habit, qSH-1, is involved in the formation of the abscission layer. To determine the mechanism, we cloned the qSH-1 gene by a map-based strategy. A large-scale linkage analysis defined an SNP as the functional nucleotide polymorphism (FNP) in qSH-1. At 12-kb away from the SNP, we found one ORF showing a high similarity to Arabidopsis REPLUMLESS gene. We produced transgenic plants with genomic fragments spanning the predicted ORF and FNP regions. The results suggested that the region containing both the ORF and the FNP is required to complement the seed shattering habit completely.
We further demonstrated that the SNP was associated with seed shattering habit among a rice core collection, suggesting that artificial selection had been performed on this SNP to improve shattering habit during rice breeding.
