Abstract
Key message
KT1 was validated as a novel thickness QTL with major effects on wheat kernel dimensions and weight and fine mapped to a 0.04 cM interval near the chromosome-5A centromere.
Abstract
Kernel size, the principal grain weight determining factor of wheat and a target trait for both domestication and artificial breeding, is mainly defined by kernel length (KL), kernel width (KW) and kernel thickness (KT), of which KW and KT have been shown to be positively related to grain weight (GW). Qkt.nau-5A, a major QTL for KT, was validated using the QTL near-isogenic lines (NILs) in three genetic backgrounds. Genetic analysis using two F2 populations derived from the NILs showed that Qkt.nau-5A was dominant for thicker kernel and inherited like a single gene and therefore was designated as Kernel Thickness 1 (KT1). With 77 recombinant lines identified from a total of 19,160 F2 plants from the two NIL-derived F2 populations, KT1 was mapped to the 0.04 cM Xwgrb1356-Xwgrb1619 interval, which was near the centromere and displayed strong recombination suppression. The KT1 interval showed positive correlation with KW and GW and negative correlation with KL and therefore could be used in breeding for cultivars with round-shaped kernels that are beneficial to higher flour yield. KT1 candidate identification could be achieved through combination of sequence variation analysis with expression profiling of the annotated genes in the interval.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871620, 91935304, 31430064), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0100401), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu (BK20190515) and Jiangsu collaborative innovation initiative for modern crop production.
Funding
This study was partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871620, 91935304, 31430064), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0100401), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu (BK20190515), and Jiangsu collaborative innovation initiative for modern crop production.
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ZXK conducted genotyping, phenotyping, data analysis and prepared the draft; RRC conducted genotyping and participated in draft preparation; HSY, WLZ and JL conducted recombinant screening, HYY and YZ helped phenotyping, YY helped data analysis, GQL, HYJ and SLX contributed to project implementation, ZQM designed the project and reviewed the article.
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122_2021_4020_MOESM1_ESM.docx
Supplementary file 1. Fig. 1 Genotypes of NIL_WSB/WSB-derived recombinant lines and the corresponding kernel thickness phenotypes across two trials in 2015-2016 season. (DOCX 92 kb)
122_2021_4020_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx
Supplementary file 2. Table 1 Analysis of variance for GW, KT, KL and KW of NIL and the recurrent parents across four environments. Table 2 Annotated genes in the KT1 interval of IWGSC v2.0 and their predicted functions. Table 3 Expression level in transcripts per million of the 69 genes in the KT1 interval based on the wheat expression atlas. (XLSX 70 kb)
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Kong, Z., Cheng, R., Yan, H. et al. Fine mapping KT1 on wheat chromosome 5A that conditions kernel dimensions and grain weight. Theor Appl Genet 135, 1101–1111 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-021-04020-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-021-04020-9