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Detection of favorable alleles for plant height and crown rust tolerance in three connected populations of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.)

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Abstract

Plant height, which is an estimator of vegetative yield, and crown rust tolerance are major criteria for perennial ryegrass breeding. Genetic improvement has been achieved through phenotypic selection but it should be speeded up using marker-assisted selection, especially in this heterozygous species suffering from inbreeding depression. Using connected multiparental populations should increase the diversity studied and could substantially increase the power of quantitative trait loci (QTL) detection. The objective of this study was to detect the best alleles for plant height and rust tolerance among three connected populations derived from elite material by comparing an analysis per parent and a multipopulation connected analysis. For the studied traits, 17 QTL were detected with the analysis per parent while the additive and dominance models of the multipopulation connected analysis made it possible to detect 33 and 21 QTL, respectively. Favorable alleles have been detected in all parents. Only a few dominance effects were detected and they generally had lower values than the additive effects. The additive model of the multipopulation connected analysis was the most powerful as it made it possible to detect most of the QTL identified in the other analyses and 11 additional QTL. Using this model, plant growth QTL and rust tolerance QTL explained up to 19 and 38.6% of phenotypic variance, respectively. This example involving three connected populations is promising for an application on polycross progenies, traditionally used in breeding programs. Indeed, polycross progenies actually are a set of several connected populations.

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Abbreviations

PH:

Plant height

PGR:

Plant growth rate

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the National Association for Research and Technology (ANRT) and the breeding firm Jouffray-Drillaud for funding. We thank the technicians and breeders from the experimental station of Jouffray-Drillaud and the GIE Grass for their help and advice on the trial. We thank the employees of the laboratory of biotechnologies of the INRA of Lusignan for helpful advice. We also thank Corinne Melin for helpful advice in managing references. We are grateful to Brigitte Mangin and Sylvain Jasson for their help on MCQTL.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jouffray-Drillaud, Station expérimentale La Litière, 86 600, Saint Sauvant, France

    Laurence Pauly, Sandrine Flajoulot & Vincent Béguier

  2. GIE Grass, Station expérimentale La Litière, 86 600, Saint Sauvant, France

    Jérôme Garon

  3. Unité de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire Prairies et Plantes Fourragères, INRA, UR 4, Le Chêne, RD 150, BP 80006, 86 600, Lusignan, France

    Bernadette Julier & Philippe Barre

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  1. Laurence Pauly
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  2. Sandrine Flajoulot
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Correspondence to Philippe Barre.

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Communicated by R. Johnson.

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Pauly, L., Flajoulot, S., Garon, J. et al. Detection of favorable alleles for plant height and crown rust tolerance in three connected populations of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). Theor Appl Genet 124, 1139–1153 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-011-1775-5

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