A key step in domestication of cereals was loss of seed shattering. Jianming Yu and colleagues show that seed shattering is controlled by alleles at Sh1 in sorghum. The authors also identify an insertion in the ortholog of Sh1 in a shattering-resistant mutant in rice and orthologs of Sh1 located in two narrow quantitative trait locus (QTL) intervals that regulate shattering in maize. The data suggest parallel selection on Sh1 in the domestication of cereals.
- Zhongwei Lin
- Xianran Li
- Jianming Yu
