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Mapping of quantitative trait loci for seedling salt tolerance in maize

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Abstract

Improved salt tolerance is a major goal for maize breeders, but the control of salt tolerance-related traits in maize is poorly understood. A set of 209 doubled haploid (DH) lines derived from the maize hybrid Xianyu335 was genotyped using 1335 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Biomass-related traits under salt stress were used as salt tolerance indicators, and a quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis was conducted in hydroponic culture under salt-stress and normal conditions. Fourteen traits showed significant phenotypic differences between parents, and 16 traits showed transgressive segregation in the DH population. We detected 65 QTL: 41 associated with salt tolerance and 24 related to normal growth. Salt tolerance-related QTL clustered on chromosomes 1, 3, 7, and 9, among which 13 major effect QTL on chromosome 1 individually explained more than 21% of the phenotypic variation. Of these large-effect QTL, QTL controlling seven traits upon salt treatment and two salt tolerance indexes were co-located; they extensively overlapped with the remaining four co-localized QTL related to four other salt tolerance indexes. The QTL identified here shed new light on the molecular mechanism of salt tolerance in maize and may provide robust functional markers for marker-assisted selection of salt tolerant maize varieties.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0300106), the Beijing Scholars Program (BSP041), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Beijing (D161100005716002), and the Innovative Team Construction Project of BAAFS (JNKYT201603).

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Author notes

  1. Meijie Luo and Yunxia Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Maize DNA Fingerprinting and Molecular Breeding, Maize Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences (BAAFS), Beijing, 100097, China

    Meijie Luo, Yunxia Zhang, Kuan Chen, Mengsi Kong, Wei Song, Baishan Lu, Yaxing Shi, Yanxin Zhao & Jiuran Zhao

Authors
  1. Meijie Luo
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  2. Yunxia Zhang
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  3. Kuan Chen
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  4. Mengsi Kong
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  5. Wei Song
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  6. Baishan Lu
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  7. Yaxing Shi
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  8. Yanxin Zhao
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  9. Jiuran Zhao
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Contributions

M.L., Y.Z. (Yanxin Zhao), and Z.J. designed the experiment. Y.Z. (Yunxia Zhang), M.L., Y.Z. (Yanxin Zhao), K.C., M.K., W.S., B.L., and Y.S. participated in data collection. M.L., Y.Z. (Yanxin Zhao), and Y.Z. (Yunxia Zhang) analyzed the data. M.L. and Y.Z. (Yanxin Zhao) wrote the manuscript. All authors listed have revised and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yanxin Zhao or Jiuran Zhao.

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Luo, M., Zhang, Y., Chen, K. et al. Mapping of quantitative trait loci for seedling salt tolerance in maize. Mol Breeding 39, 64 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11032-019-0974-7

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