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Insights into Sorghum Starch Biosynthesis from Structure Changes Induced by Different Growth Temperatures

¹Tongji School of Pharmacy, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, 430030. ²The University of Queensland, Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. ³The University of Queensland, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. ⁴Corresponding author. Phone: +61 7 3365 4809. Fax: +61 7 3365 1188. E-mail: b.gilbert@uq.edu.au

The effects of high growth temperature on sorghum starch structures were examined from the grains of three inbred lines (BTx623, IS8525, and Karper669), and the possible mechanism by which the growth of amylopectin molecules is terminated was discussed. Sorghum plants were grown at high temperature (38/21°C day/night) and control temperature (32/22°C day/night) from sowing to maturity. The grains sampled from plants grown at high temperature had significantly lower starch weights per grain (except BTx623) and smaller starch granule sizes than those grown at control temperature. Nevertheless, the amylose contents were similar. BTx623 and IS8525 samples grown at high temperature also had higher ratios of long to short amylopectin branches and lower degree of branching than their control counterparts. These results suggested that the activities of starch biosynthetic enzymes were evidently affected by elevated growth temperature. However, the weight-average molecular weight and the z-average radius of gyration of sorghum starch molecules were not significantly affected by the growth temperatures, suggesting that the effects of growth temperature on starch yield, starch granule size, and the branching structure of amylopectin molecules did not influence the events that stopped the overall growth of amylopectin molecules. This observation was consistent with the cessation of whole-molecule growth being through increasing hindrance to enzyme access as the size of the starch molecule increases, controlled largely by the molecular density of the outermost part of an amylopectin molecule.