An ancient super allele of the Vrs1 gene driving the recent success in modern barley improvement through optimising spike architecture

doi:10.1016/j.jia.2025.06.017

Journal of Integrative Agriculture ›› 2026, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (2): 602-609.DOI: 10.1016/j.jia.2025.06.017

收稿日期:2025-02-02 修回日期:2025-06-10 接受日期:2025-05-09 出版日期:2026-02-20 发布日期:2026-01-07

An ancient super allele of the Vrs1 gene driving the recent success in modern barley improvement through optimising spike architecture

Jingye Cheng^{1, 2*}, Rui Pan^3*, Wenying Zhang³, Tianhua He^2#, Chengdao Li^2#

¹Beijing Key Laboratory of Agricultural Genetic Resources and Biochemistry/Institute of Biotechnology, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, China
²Western Crop Genetics Alliance, Food Futures Institute/School of Agriculture, Murdoch University, Murdoch 6150, Australia
³College of Agriculture, Yangtze University/Engineering Research Centre of Ecology and Agricultural Use of Wetland, Ministry of Education, Jingzhou 434020, China

Received:2025-02-02 Revised:2025-06-10 Accepted:2025-05-09 Online:2026-02-20 Published:2026-01-07
About author:#Correspondence Tianhua He, E-mail: Tianhua.He@murdoch.edu.au; Chengdao Li, E-mail: c.li@murdoch.edu.au * These authors contributed equally to this study.
Supported by:
Funding for this research was provided by the Australia Grain Research and Development Corporation (9176507) and the Western Crop Genetics Alliance. Jingye Cheng thanks The University of Tasmania, Australia for the scholarship (495802).

摘要/Abstract

Abstract:

Improved yield potential is the goal of barley domestication and cultivation. During this process, two- and six-rowed barley types emerged and have been utilised in breeding and production. The six-rowed type could produce three times as many grains as its ancestral two-rowed forms, thus dominating barley cultivation for thousands of years. The deficiens form of the two-rowed type, characterised by extremely suppressed lateral spikelets, has gained dominance over the past few decades in barley-growing regions worldwide. We hypothesised that the absence of lateral spikelets in deficiens barley affects spike architecture and spike-related traits, contributing to its superior yield potential of deficiens barley cultivation. Currently, a deficiens barley variety, RGT Planet, is the most popular barley variety in the world. In this study, we used two F₂ populations derived from crossing RGT Planet with two canonical two-rowed barley and identified the functional allele Vrs1.t1 associated with deficiens morphology. We observed that the Vrs1.t1 allele may contribute to high yield potential by optimising spike architecture through increased spikelet length, grain number, and grain size. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the deficiens mutation was likely present from the early stages of barley cultivation in the Fertile Crescent and spread to Ethiopia and beyond with agricultural expansion. We conclude that the ancient deficiens allele Vrs1.t1 has been a critical driver for the recent success of modern barley improvement by optimising spike architecture.

Key words: deficiens barley , fine mapping , Vrs1 gene , row types , spike architecture , yield potential

. [J]. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2026, 25(2): 602-609.

Jingye Cheng, Rui Pan, Wenying Zhang, Tianhua He, Chengdao Li. An ancient super allele of the Vrs1 gene driving the recent success in modern barley improvement through optimising spike architecture[J]. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2026, 25(2): 602-609.

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An ancient super allele of the Vrs1 gene driving the recent success in modern barley improvement through optimising spike architecture

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