Genetic incorporation of genes for the optimal plant architecture in common wheat

Linyi Qiao; Xiaojun Zhang; Xin Li; Zujun Yang; Rui Li; Juqing Jia; Liuling Yan; Zhijian Chang

doi:10.1007/s11032-022-01336-2

Genetic incorporation of genes for the optimal plant architecture in common wheat

Mol Breed. 2022 Oct 14;42(10):66. doi: 10.1007/s11032-022-01336-2. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Authors

Linyi Qiao^#^{1

2}, Xiaojun Zhang^#¹, Xin Li¹, Zujun Yang³, Rui Li¹, Juqing Jia¹, Liuling Yan², Zhijian Chang¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Agronomy, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taiyuan, 030031 Shanxi China.
² Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078 USA.
³ School of Life Science and Technology, Science and Technology of China, University of Electronic, Chengdu, 610054 China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Wheat grain yield is affected by plant height, which is the total length of spike, the uppermost internode, and other elongated internodes. In this study, a population of recombinant inbred lines generated from a cross between two advanced winter wheat breeding lines were phenotyped over four locations/years and genotyped by using markers of genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) and Diversity Array Technology (DArT) for mapping of genes for three traits, including spike length, the uppermost internode length, and plant height. Five genomic regions or quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were associated with candidate genes for these traits. A major QTL was associated with Q5A, and two novel haplotypes of Q5A were identified, one for a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at position -2,149 in promoter region and the other for copy number variation. Compared with one copy Q5A on chromosome 5A in Chinese Spring, the novel haplotype of Q5A with two copies Q5A was found to generate spikes that are extremely compacted. A major QTL was associated with allelic variation in the recessive vrn-A1 alleles involving in protein sequences, and this QTL was associated with increased uppermost internode length but not with plant height. A major QTL for plant height was associated with Rht-B1b on chromosome 4B, but its effects could be compromised by two new minor QTLs on chromosome 7. Collectively, the favorable alleles from the four loci can be used to establish the optimal plant height in wheat.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11032-022-01336-2.

Keywords: Plant height; Q gene; Spike length; The uppermost internode length; Wheat.

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