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Sef1, rapid-cycling Brassica napus for large-scale functional genome research in a controlled environment

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Abstract

Key message

We demonstrated a short-cycle B. napus line, Sef1, with a highly efficient and fast transformation system, which has great potential in large-scale functional gene analysis in a controlled environment.

Abstract

Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) is an essential oil crop that accounts for a considerable share of global vegetable oil production. Nonetheless, studies on functional genes of B. napus are lagging behind due to the complicated genome and long growth cycle, this is largely due to the limited availability of gene analysis and modern genome editing-based molecular breeding. In this study, we demonstrated a short-cycle semi-winter-type Brassica napus ‘Sef1’ with very early-flowering and dwarf phenotype, which has great potential in large-scale indoor planting. Through the construction of an F2 population of Sef1 and Zhongshuang11, bulked segregant analysis (BSA) combined with the rape Bnapus50K SNP chip assay method was used to identify the early-flowering genes in Sef1, and a mutation in BnaFT.A02 was identified as a major locus significantly affecting the flowering time in Sef1. To further investigate the mechanism of early flowering in Sef1 and discover its potential in gene function analysis, an efficient Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system was established. The average transformation efficiency with explants of hypocotyls and cotyledons was 20.37% and 12.8%, respectively, and the entire transformation process took approximately 3 months from explant preparation to seed harvest of transformed plants. This study demonstrates the great potential of Sef1 for large-scale functional gene analysis.

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Data availability

All data generated during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files. The supplementary materials are available at the online version.

Materials request

The authors agree to provide B. napus line Sef1 for research purpose only under a Material Transfer Agreement. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to ZF (fanzhixiong@aaas.org.cn).

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Funding

This work was supported by Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. LY21C130008 and Shanghai Agricultural Foundation (No. 202001).

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Author notes

  1. Xiaofang Xie and Yanhua Jiang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plant Genomics and Molecular Improvement of Colored Fiber Lab, College of Life Sciences and Medicine, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    Xiaofang Xie, Yanhua Jiang, Wenqi Xu, Weiguang Yang, Duo Qian, Jie Gao, Fangfang Cai, Dongliang Yu & Liping Ke

  2. Crop Institute, Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Weixia Lei & Zhixiong Fan

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  1. Xiaofang Xie
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  2. Yanhua Jiang
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Contributions

LK and ZF conceived and designed the experiments. XX, YJ, WX, WY, DQ, and JG performed the experiments. XX, YJ, DY, and FC analyzed the data. XX, LK, and ZF wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Liping Ke or Zhixiong Fan.

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Xie, X., Jiang, Y., Xu, W. et al. Sef1, rapid-cycling Brassica napus for large-scale functional genome research in a controlled environment. Theor Appl Genet 136, 163 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-023-04402-1

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