The current rate of yield gain in crops is insufficient to meet the predicted demands. Capturing the yield boost from heterosis is one of the few technologies that offers rapid gain. Hybrids are widely used for cereals, maize and rice, but it has been a challenge to develop a viable hybrid system for bread wheat due to the wheat genome complexity, which is both large and hexaploid. Wheat is our most widely grown crop providing 20% of the calories for humans. Here, we describe the identification of Ms1, a gene proposed for use in large-scale, low-cost production of male-sterile (ms) female lines necessary for hybrid wheat seed production. We show that Ms1 completely restores fertility to ms1d, and encodes a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored lipid transfer protein, necessary for pollen exine development. This represents a key step towards developing a robust hybridization platform in wheat.Heterosis can rapidly boost yield in crop species but development of hybrid-breeding systems for bread wheat remains a challenge. Here, Tucker et al. describe the molecular identification of the wheat Ms1 gene and discuss its potential for large-scale hybrid seed production in wheat.

中文翻译：

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小麦雄性育性基因Ms1的分子鉴定及其杂交育种前景。

当前农作物的增产速度不足以满足预期的需求。从杂种优势中获得产量的提高是为数不多的可快速获得收益的技术之一。杂种被广泛用于谷物，玉米和大米，但是由于小麦基因组既复杂又大，六倍体，因此为面包小麦开发可行的杂种系统一直是一个挑战。小麦是我们生长最广泛的作物，可为人类提供20％的卡路里。在这里，我们描述了Ms1的鉴定，该基因被提议用于大规模，低成本生产杂交小麦种子生产所必需的雄性不育（ms）雌性品系。我们显示Ms1完全恢复到ms1d的生育能力，并编码花粉外壁发育必需的糖基磷脂酰肌醇固定的脂质转移蛋白。这是迈向开发强大的小麦杂交平台的关键一步。杂种优势可以迅速提高作物品种的产量，但面包小麦杂交育种系统的发展仍然是一个挑战。在这里，塔克等。描述了小麦Ms1基因的分子鉴定，并讨论了其在小麦中大规模杂交种子生产的潜力。