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ARS Home » Plains Area » Lubbock, Texas » Cropping Systems Research Laboratory » Plant Stress and Germplasm Development Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #344627
Title: Registration of BTx623ms8 - a new and easily identifiable nuclear male sterile mutant in sorghum

Author
item Xin, Zhanguo
item Chen, Junping
item Jiao, Yinping
item Gladman, Nicholas
item Hayes, Chad
item Burow, Gloria
item Emendack, Yves
item Burke, John

Submitted to: Journal of Plant Registrations
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/1/2017
Publication Date: 1/11/2018
Citation: Xin, Z., Chen, J., Jiao, Y., Gladman, N., Hayes, C.M., Burow, G.B., Emendack, Y., Burke, J.J. 2018. Registration of BTx623ms8 - a new and easily identifiable nuclear male sterile mutant in sorghum. Journal of Plant Registrations. https://doi.org/10.3198/jpr2017.09.0063crgs.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3198/jpr2017.09.0063crgs

Interpretive Summary: Sorghum yields have not increased since the 1970's as corn yields have. This lack of yield increase is due in part to less investment by private and pubic sorghum breeders and lack of development of better hybridization methods. Nuclear male sterile mutants are important tools to understand microspore biogenesis and to develop new hybrid breeding systems. ARS scientists at Lubbock, Texas released a new nuclear male sterile mutant (BTX623ms8) that is different from any of the currently available male sterile lines in sorghum. The male sterility in this mutant can be recognized at the beginning of anthesis and remains prominent during the entire anthesis stage, making it a convenient breeding tool for sorghum population improvement and heterosis test.

Technical Abstract: The USDA-ARS has released a new nuclear male sterile sorghum mutant BTx623ms8 (Registration No.xxxx, PIxxxxx). Previously, seven nuclear male sterile mutants have been reported but three are no longer available for sorghum. Here we register a new nuclear male sterile mutant from a mutagenized BTx623 mutant library that is genetically different from any of the four male sterile mutants currently available. The ms8 mutants have microscopic transparent anthers that eventually abort. It can be easily identified at very early stages of anthesis by the appearance of prominent white, hairy stigma, rather than yellow anthers as in BTx623 and all other fertile sorghum accessions. We have developed BC6F2 seeds that produced approximately 50% male sterile plants by pollinating the homozygous ms8 mutants with the heterozygous fertile plants. The ms8 is a single recessive nuclear gene mutation and can be easily bred into other sorghum lines through recurrent backcrossing, broadening the utility of this easily recognizable nuclear male sterility.