Potential gene editing targets for developing haploid inducer stocks in rice and wheat with high haploid induction frequency.

Unlabelled: Doubled haploid (DH) breeding is a powerful technique to ensure global food security via accelerated crop improvement. DH can be produced by employing haploid inducer stock (HIS). Widely used HIS in maize is known to be governed by , , and  genes. To develop such HIS in rice and wheat, we have identified putative orthologs of these genes using in silico approaches. The ; , and ;  were identified as putative orthologs of  and  in rice and wheat, respectively. Despite being closely related to ,  and  have shown higher anther-specific expression. Similarly,  and  were found closely related to the  based on both phylogenetic and expression analysis. However, unlike and two orthologs have been found for each crop.  and  in rice and  and  in wheat have shown similarity to  in terms of both sequence and expression pattern. Furthermore, analogs to maize DMP proteins, these genes possess four transmembrane helices making them best suited to be regarded as  orthologs. Modifying these predicted orthologous genes by CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing can produce a highly efficient HIS in both rice and wheat. Besides revealing the genetic mechanism of haploid induction, the development of HIS would advance the genetic improvement of these crops.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13205-023-03857-9.