Authors: Elsayed Mansour Ana M Casas M Pilar Gracia José Luis MolinaCano Marian Moralejo Luigi Cattivelli William T B Thomas Ernesto Igartua
Publish Date: 2013/09/15
Volume: 33, Issue: 2, Pages: 249-265
Abstract
Advances in plant breeding through markerassisted selection MAS are only possible when genes or quantitative trait loci QTLs can contribute to the improvement of elite germplasm A population of recombinant inbred lines RILs was developed for one of the best crosses of the Spanish National Barley Breeding Program between two sixrow winter barley cultivars Orria and Plaisant The objective of this study was to identify favourable QTLs for agronomic traits in this population which may help to optimise breeding strategies for these and other elite materials for the Mediterranean region A genetic linkage map was developed for 217 RILs using 382 single nucleotide polymorphism markers selected from the barley oligonucleotide pool assay BOPA1 and two genes A subset of 112 RILs was evaluated for several agronomic traits over a period of 2 years at three locations Lleida and Zaragoza Spain and Fiorenzuola d’Arda Italy for a total of five field trials An important segregation distortion occurred during population development in the region surrounding the VrnH1 locus A QTL for grain yield and length of growth cycle was also found at this locus apparently linked to a differential response of the VrnH1 alleles to temperature A total of 33 QTLs was detected most of them for important breeding targets such as plant height and thousandgrain weight QTL × environment interactions were prevalent for most of the QTLs detected although most interactions were of a quantitative nature Therefore QTLs suitable for MAS for most traits were identifiedThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation MICINN who funded this work with the scholarship BES2008009623 EM and the projects AGL201021929 GEN200628560E and RTA200900006C04 We thank Malcolm Macaulay and Richard Keith for their assistance with genotyping software and Marvin analysis respectively The James Hutton Institute receives grant in aid from the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division
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