SummaryThe marriage of metabolomic approaches with genetic design has proven a powerful tool in dissecting diversity in the metabolome and has additionally enhanced our understanding of complex traits. That said, such studies have rarely been carried out in wheat. In this study, we detected 805 metabolites from wheat kernels and profiled their relative contents among 182 wheat accessions, conducting a metabolite‐based genome‐wide association study (mGWAS) utilizing 14 646 previously described polymorphic SNP markers. A total of 1098 mGWAS associations were detected with large effects, within which 26 candidate genes were tentatively designated for 42 loci. Enzymatic assay of two candidates indicated they could catalyse glucosylation and subsequent malonylation of various flavonoids and thereby the major flavonoid decoration pathway of wheat kernel was dissected. Moreover, numerous high‐confidence genes associated with metabolite contents have been provided, as well as more subdivided metabolite networks which are yet to be explored within our data. These combined efforts presented the first step towards realizing metabolomics‐associated breeding of wheat.
In plants, enhanced defense often compromises growth and development, which is regarded as trade-offs between growth and defense. Here we identified a gene, OsALDH2B1, that functions as a master regulator of the growth–defense trade-off in rice. OsALDH2B1 has its primary function as an aldehyde dehydrogenase and a moonlight function as a transcriptional regulator. Loss of function of OsALDH2B1 greatly enhanced resistance to broad-spectrum pathogens, including fungal blast, bacterial leaf blight, and leaf streak, but caused severe phenotypic changes such as male sterility and reduced plant size, grain size, and number. We showed that its primary function as a mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase conditions male fertility. Its moonlight function of transcriptional regulation, featuring both repressing and activating activities, regulates a diverse range of biological processes involving brassinolide, G protein, jasmonic acid, and salicylic acid signaling pathways. Such regulations cause large impacts on the morphology and immunity of rice plants. The versatile functions of OsALDH2B1 provide an example of the genic basis of growth–defense trade-offs in plants.
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