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From early farmers to Norman Borlaug — the making of modern wheat

2017; Elsevier BV; Volume: 27; Issue: 17 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.061

1879-0445

David Vergauwen, Ive De Smet,

Wheat and Barley Genetics and Pathology

If we wander through the countryside, passing fields of wheat, it is apparent that this crop is reasonably short in stature and that the stems carry large ears. However, this was not always the case. If we take a look at depictions of wheat throughout history, we observe that wheat used to be fairly tall. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that dwarf wheat varieties started to dominate the agricultural landscape. Underlying this short stature are the Reduced height (Rht) genes, which encode DELLA proteins and which formed the cornerstone of the Green Revolution.