Abstract
Morphologies of flowers and inflorescences in monocots are distinct from those of flowers and inflorescences in eudicots. Especially in grasses, the inflorescences comprise of unique structural units, the spikelet and the floret. It has been regarded that the rice spikelet was originally composed of three florets. The uppermost floret is bisexual and fertile, whereas two lower florets are strongly reduced and sterile. The two lower florets develop only reduced lemma, known as sterile lemma. We have focused on the developmental mechanism of the sterile lemma to elucidate morphological evolution of rice spikelet. Here, we report phenotypic analysis of a rice mutant, sterile lemma of which are longer than those of wild type, and isolation of the gene responsible for the mutation.
