Genetics of nitrogen metabolism and physiological/biochemical selection for increased grain crop productivity
- 1 January 1984
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Theoretical and Applied Genetics
- Vol. 67 (2-3), 97-111
- https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00317013
Abstract
It is necessary to increase protein productivity of grain crops to meet present and future world protein requirements. Conventional plant breeding methodology has been to select genotypes with enhanced yield or grain protein concentration. In addition to this determination of end product, we suggest measurements of a number of physiological and biochemical processes of nitrogen (N) metabolism which precede plant maturity as selection criteria for enhanced N metabolism and grain crop productivity. The measurement across the growing season of genotypic variation in components of N metabolism would constitute a physiological/biochemical selection program to be incorporated with the determination of harvestable end product. A properly designed physiological/biochemical selection program would integrate the effects of plant genotype, environment, and their interactions allowing identification of the factors limiting productivity of particular genotypes, and would also estimate end product. Our review of literature pertinent to whole plant N metabolism suggests that such a selection program initially include NO 3 - uptake, N2 fixation, N accumulation, N remobilization, seed protein synthesis, and Nitrogen Harvest Index.Keywords
This publication has 87 references indexed in Scilit:
- Genetic Control of Nitrogen Uptake and Translocation in Maize1Crop Science, 1979
- Variation in Mobilization of Plant Nitrogen to the Grain in Nodulating and Non‐Nodulating Soybean Genotypes1Crop Science, 1978
- Nitrogen Nutrition and Grain Protein in Two Spring Wheat Genotypes Differing in Nitrate Reductase Activity1Crop Science, 1977
- Hydrogen evolution: A major factor affecting the efficiency of nitrogen fixation in nodulated symbiontsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1976
- Nitrate Reductase Activity of Grain Sorghum Leaves as Related to Yields of Grain, Dry Matter, and Nitrogen 1Crop Science, 1975
- Inheritance of Nitrate Reductase Activity, Grain Protein, and Straw Protein in a Hard Red Winter Wheat Cross1Agronomy Journal, 1972
- Cereal breeding for better protein impactEconomic Botany, 1968
- Inheritance of a Strain‐Specific Ineffective Nodulation in Soybeans1Crop Science, 1966
- Response of Lee Soybeans to Different Strains of Rhizobium japonicum1Agronomy Journal, 1964
- Development and Composition of Spring Wheat as Influenced by Nitrogen and Phosphorus Fertilization1Agronomy Journal, 1961