Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important staple crops worldwide.  The phytohormone auxin plays critical roles in the regulation of plant growth and development.  However, only a few auxin-related genes have been genetically demonstrated to be involved in the control of plant architecture in wheat thus far.  In this study, we characterized an auxin-related gene in wheat, TaIAA15, and found that its ectopic expression in rice decreased the plant height and increased the leaf angle.  Correlation analysis indicated that TaIAA15-3B was associated with plant height (Ph), spike length (SL) and 1 000-grain weight (TGW) in wheat, and Hap-II of TaIAA15-3B was the most favored allele and selected by modern breeding in China.  This study sheds light on the role of auxin signaling on wheat plant architecture as well as yield related traits.

    An optimum heading date is essential for sustainable crop productivity and ensuring high yields. In the present study, F_2:3 populations were generated by crossing an early-heading accession, Y2280, with a late-heading accession, Y2282. The heading dates of the F₂ and F₃ populations were investigated in a field study. Using publicly available simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, the early heading date gene HdAey2280 was mapped onto Aegilops tauschii chromosome 7DS between the flanking markers wmc438 and barc126 at distances of 15 and 9.1 cM, respectively. Further analysis indicated that HdAey2280 is a novel heading date gene. New SSR markers were developed based on the Ae. tauschii draft genome sequence, resulting in four new markers that were linked to the heading date gene HdAey2280. The closest distance of these markers was 1.9 cM away from the gene. The results collected in this study will serve as a framework for map-based cloning and marker-assisted selection in wheat breeding programs in the future.

Heading date was an important trait that decided the adaptation of wheat to environments. It was modified by genes involved in vernalization response, photoperiod response and development rate. In this study, four loci Xgwm261, Xgwm219, Xbarc23 and Ppd-D1 which were previously reported related to heading time were analyzed based on three groups of wheat including landraces (L), varieties bred before 1983 (B82) and after 1983 (A83) collected from Chinese wheat growing areas. Generally, heading date of landrace was longer than that of varieties. Significant differences in the heading time existed within the groups, which implied that diversification selection was much helpful for adaptation in each wheat zone. Photoperiod insensitive allele Ppd-D1a was the first choice for both landrace and modern varieties, which promoted the heading date about four days earlier than that of sensitive allele Ppd-D1b. The three SSR loci had different characters in the three groups. Predominant allele combination for each zone was predicted for wheat group L and A83, which made great contribution to advantageous traits. Xgwm219 was found to be significantly associated with heading date in Yellow and Huai River Winter Wheat Zone (Zone II) and spike length in Middle and lower Yangtze Valley Winter Wheat Zone (Zone III), which implied functional diversification for adaption. Variation for earliness genes provided here will be helpful for whet breeding in future climatic change.