Identification of a novel male sterile wheat mutant dms conferring dwarf status and multi-pistils

Abstract Plant height and fertility are two important traits of wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.), whose mutants are ideal materials for studies on molecular mechanisms of stem and floral organ development. In this study, we identified a dwarf, multi-pistil and male sterile ( dms hereafter) wheat mutant from Zhoumai 18. Simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker assay with 181 primer pairs showed that only one locus of GWM148-2B was divergent between Zhoumai 18 and dms. There were three typical phenotypes in the progeny of dms, tall (T; ca. 0.8 m), semi-dwarf (M; ca. 0.6 m) and dwarf (D; under 0.3 m) plants. Morphological investigation indicated that the internode length of M was shortened by about 20–50 mm each; the internode number of D was 2 less than that of T and Zhoumai 18, and its internode length was shorter also. The pollen vigor and hybridization test demonstrated that dms mutant was male sterility. Segregated phenotypes in progeny of M suggested that the multi-pistils and sterility were controlled by one recessive gene locus which was designated as dms temporarily, and the plant height was controlled by a semi-dominant gene locus Dms. Therefore, progeny individuals of the dms had three genotypes, DmsDms for tall plants, Dmsdms for semi-dwarf plants and dmsdms for dwarf plants. The mutant progenies were individually selected and propagated for more than 6 generations, thus a set of near isogenic lines of T, M and D for dms were developed. This study provides a set germplasms for studies on molecular mechanisms of wheat stem and spike development.