Postdomestication selection of MKK3 shaped seed dormancy and end-use traits in barley
- Morten E. Jørgensen
- Dominique Vequaud
- Yucheng Wang
- Christian B. Andersen
- Micha Bayer
- Amanda Box
- Katarzyna B. Braune
- Yuanyang Cai
- Fahu Chen
- Jose A. Cuesta-Seijo
- Haoran Dong
- Geoffrey B. Fincher
- Zoran Gojkovic
- Zihao Huang
- Benjamin Jaegle
- Sandip M. Kale
- Flavia Krsticevic
- Pierre-Marie Le Roux
- Antoine Lozier
- Qiongxian Lu
- Martin Mascher
- Emiko Murozuka
- Shingo Nakamura
- Martin Ude Simmelsgaard
- Pai R. Pedas
- Pierre A. Pin
- Dagmara Podzimska-Sroka
- Kazuhiro Sato
- Manuel Spannagl
- Magnus W. Rasmussen
- Joanne Russell
- Miriam Schreiber
- Hanne C. Thomsen
- Nina W. Thomsen
- Sophia Tulloch
- Cynthia Voss
- Birgitte Skadhauge
- Nils Stein
- Eske Willerslev
- Robbie Waugh
- Christoph Dockter
2025-11-06
Anthropogenic selection of grain traits such as dormancy has shaped the developmental trajectories of crops. In cereals, shortening dormancy provides rapid and even postharvest germination, but increases the risk of weather-induced preharvest sprouting, with yearly harvest losses beyond 1 billion dollars. Our understanding of how, why, when, and where cereal dormancy diversification arose is fragmentary. Here, we show in the founder crop barley ( Hordeum vulgare ) that dormancy is primarily regulated through a mosaic of locus haplotypes comprising copy number variation and inherent kinase activity of Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 3 ( MKK3 ). We provide evidence supporting the historical selection of specific MKK3 haplotypes that shaped dormancy levels according to changing climatic pressures and outline a genetic framework for breeders to balance grain dormancy and preharvest sprouting avoidance.