News Release 14-Oct-2025

Scientists discover a gene that could triple wheat production

University of Maryland researchers found the gene responsible for rare variety of wheat with three ovaries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Maryland

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A  representative MOV-wheat spikelet (a) and spike (b) showing the effect of the Mov-1 locus on grain number. Regular bread wheat has one grain per spikelet. 

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Credit: Vijay Tiwari, University of Maryland

University of Maryland researchers discovered the gene that makes a rare form of wheat grow three ovaries per flower instead of one. Since each ovary can potentially develop into a grain of wheat, the gene could help farmers grow much more wheat per acre. Their work was published on October 14, 2025, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The special trait of growing three ovaries per flower was initially discovered in a spontaneously occurring mutant of common bread wheat. But it wasn’t clear what genetic changes led to the new trait. The UMD team created a highly detailed map of the multi-ovary wheat’s DNA and compared it to regular wheat. They discovered that the normally dormant gene WUSCHEL-D1 (WUS-D1) was “switched on” in the multi-ovary wheat. When WUS-D1 is active early in flower development, it enlarges the flower-building tissues, enabling them to produce extra female parts like pistils or ovaries.

If breeders can control or mimic this genetic trick of activating WUS-D1, they could design new wheat varieties that grow more kernels per plant. Even small gains in the number of kernels per plant can translate into huge increases in food supply at the global scale.

“Pinpointing the genetic basis of this trait offers a path for breeders to incorporate it into new wheat varieties, potentially increasing the number of grains per spike and overall yield,” said Vijay Tiwari, Associate Professor of Plant Sciences and co-author of the study. “By employing a gene editing toolkit, we can now focus on further improving this trait for enhancing wheat yield. This discovery provides an exciting route to develop cost-effective hybrid wheat.”   

That’s important because wheat is one of the world’s staple crops, feeding billions of people every day. As global demand for wheat continues to rise, climate change, limited farmland, and population growth make it increasingly difficult to increase production using traditional methods. This discovery could give breeders a powerful new tool to boost yields without needing more land, water, or fertilizer.

The discovery of WUS-D1 could also lead to the development of similar multi-ovary varieties of other grain crops.

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In addition to Dr. Tiwari, other authors of this paper from the University of Maryland Department of Plant Sciences include lead author and faculty assistant Adam Schoen, Professor Yiping Qi, Professor Emeritus Angus Murphy, Associate Professor Nidhi Rawat, Assistant Professor Daniel Rodriguez-Leal, Assistant Research Scientist Weifeng Luo, PhD student Anmol Kajla, Post Doctoral Associate Parva Kumar Sharma, and Alex Mahlandt (a former MS student from Tiwari lab). 

The paper “WUSCHEL-D1 upregulation enhances grain number by inducing formation of multi-ovary producing florets in wheat,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 14, 2025

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (Awards 13716674 and 13368004), the Australian Research Council (FT210100810), the Royal Society (UF150081), and the Yitpi Foundation. The views expressed in this story do not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.