Genetic analysis of water loss of excised leaves associated with drought tolerance in wheat

Ilona Mieczysława Czyczyło-Mysza; Izabela Marcińska; Edyta Skrzypek; Jan Bocianowski; Kinga Dziurka; Dragana Rančić; Radenko Radošević; Sofija Pekić-Quarrie; Dejan Dodig; Stephen Alexander Quarrie

doi:10.7717/peerj.5063

Genetic analysis of water loss of excised leaves associated with drought tolerance in wheat

PeerJ. 2018 Jul 6:6:e5063. doi: 10.7717/peerj.5063. eCollection 2018.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biotechnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, The Franciszek Górski Institute of Plant Physiology, Kraków, Poland.
² Department of Mathematical and Statistical Methods, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poznań, Poland.
³ Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁴ Maize Research Institute Zemun Polje, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁵ Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.
⁶ Faculty of Biology, Belgrade University, Belgrade, Serbia.

Abstract

Background: Wheat is widely affected by drought. Low excised-leaf water loss (ELWL) has frequently been associated with improved grain yield under drought. This study dissected the genetic control of ELWL in wheat, associated physiological, morphological and anatomical leaf traits, and compared these with yield QTLs.

Methods: Ninety-four hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) doubled haploids, mapped with over 700 markers, were tested for three years for ELWL from detached leaf 4 of glasshouse-grown plants. In one experiment, stomata per unit area and leaf thickness parameters from leaf cross-sections were measured. QTLs were identified using QTLCartographer.

Results: ELWL was significantly negatively correlated with leaf length, width, area and thickness. Major QTLs for ELWL during 0-3 h and 3-6 h were coincident across trials on 3A, 3B, 4B, 5B, 5D, 6B, 7A, 7B, 7D and frequently coincident (inversely) with leaf size QTLs. Yield in other trials was sometimes associated with ELWL and leaf size phenotypically and genotypically, but more frequently under non-droughted than droughted conditions. QTL coincidence showed only ELWL to be associated with drought/control yield ratio.

Discussion: Our results demonstrated that measures of ELWL and leaf size were equally effective predictors of yield, and both were more useful for selecting under favourable than stressed conditions.

Keywords: Anatomy; Excised-leaf water loss (ELWL); Leaf size; Morphology; QTL analysis; Stomata; Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.); Yield.

Grants and funding

The study was partly financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland, (No 479/N-COST-2009/0 and 480/N-COST/2009/0), statutory investigations in IPP PAS, Kraków, Poland. The manuscript was prepared within a bilateral cooperation project between Polish and Serbian Academies of Science and Faculty of Agriculture, Belgrade University, 2016–2019. There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.