Unraveling the genetic components of perenniality: Toward breeding for perennial grains

Social Impact Statement Although tremendously successful at feeding humanity, row crop agriculture based on annuals contributes to numerous ecosystem dis-services, ranging from soil degradation and aquatic eutrophication to greenhouse gas production. In contrast, perennial grain crops (which produce harvests for multiple seasons from single plantings) have the potential to provide valuable regulating and supporting ecosystem services in addition to food production. In particular, losses of ecological capital that threaten permanent food insecurity such as similar to 1% of global soil per year are expected to be mitigated or even reversed by crops that combine the high yield realized by scientific breeding via multiple cropping cycles from single plantings. Summary Perennial herbaceous may provide food and biomass while preserving ecological capital and reducing energy inputs. Sorghum has two perennial relatives and rich morphological diversity being used to breed for perenniality. We elucidate genetic determinants of rhizomatousness and survival, in two BC1F2 populations totaling 246 genotypes derived from backcrossing different annual Sorghum bicolor X perennial S. halepense F-1 plants to a tetraploidized S. bicolor. RNA-seq assisted in identifying candidate genes for rhizomatousness. Correspondence of rhizomatousness quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with those from two populations derived from crosses between S. halepense progenitors S. bicolor X S. propinquum suggests either the preservation of interspecific polymorphism or the formation of novel alleles following polyploid S. halepense formation. Correspondence of tillering and branching QTLs further supports their developmental. Identification of genes from RNA-seq study within QTL intervals provides insight toward discovery of causal rhizomatous genes. An unexpected finding from both S. halepense- and S. propinquum-derived populations is that alleles contributing to late flowering are related to reduced rhizomatousness. Twelve of 16 QTL regions conferring rhizomatousness fall in paleo-duplicated regions tracing to single ancestral regions 96 million years ago, indicating that corresponding genes in these regions have retained similar functions since the duplication event.