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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biotechnology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1485819
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Tef Research View all 4 articles

Biggest of tinies: Natural variation in seed size and mineral distribution in the ancient crop tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter]

Provisionally accepted
Eric Whisnant Eric Whisnant 1Christian Keith Christian Keith 1Louis Smieska Louis Smieska 2Ju-Chen Chia Ju-Chen Chia 2Abreham Bekele-Alemu Abreham Bekele-Alemu 1Olena Vatamaniuk Olena Vatamaniuk 2Robert VanBuren Robert VanBuren 3Ayalew Ligaba-Osena Ayalew Ligaba-Osena 1*
  • 1 University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, United States
  • 2 Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States
  • 3 Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is the major staple crop for millions of people in Ethiopia and Eritrea and is believed to have been domesticated several thousand years ago. Tef has the smallest grains of all the cereals, which directly impacts its productivity and presents numerous challenges to its cultivation. In this study, the natural variation in seed size of 189 tef and 11 accessions of its wild progenitor Indian lovegrass (Eragrostis pilosa (L.) P. Beauv.), and the mineral distribution of representative accessions were analyzed. The findings revealed significant natural variation in seed size and mineral concentration among both the tef and E. pilosa accessions. We observed a significant variation in seed length, seed width, and seed area among the accessions of both Eragrostis spp. analyzed in this study. Furthermore, significant variation in 1000-grain weight was observed among representative accessions of both species. The observed variation in seed size attributes prompted us to perform comparative genomic analysis to identify seed size regulating genes based on the well-studied and closely related monocot cereal rice [Oryza sativa (L.)]. This enabled us to identify putative tef orthologs that belong to a number of key pathways including ubiquitin-proteasome, G-protein, MAPK, and brassinosteroid (BR)-family genes and showed significant similarity to seed size regulating genes in rice and other cereals. Because tef is known to be more nutrient-dense than other more common cereals such as rice, wheat, and maize, we also studied the mineral concentration of selected accessions using ICP-OES and explored their distribution within the seeds using synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy. The findings showed a significant variation

    Keywords: Eragrostis tef, Eragrostis pilosa, seed size, Mineral distribution, Mineral concentration, seed size regulating genes

    Received: 24 Aug 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Whisnant, Keith, Smieska, Chia, Bekele-Alemu, Vatamaniuk, VanBuren and Ligaba-Osena. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ayalew Ligaba-Osena, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, United States

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