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Genetic diversity and association mapping of forage quality in diverse bermudagrass accessions

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Abstract

Bermudagrass is a warm season grass widely cultivated for turf and fodder. Nonetheless, the grass has poor forage quality because animals that consume it fail to assimilate its organic matter efficiently. Thus, identification of the marker-trait association between simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers and forage-quality-related traits in diverse bermudagrass accessions would enable efficient selection of high forage quality bermudagrass cultivars. Association mapping of 8 forage-related-quality traits with 1474 markers was conducted in 60 diverse bermudagrass accessions from five geographical regions in China. Significant variations in eight phenotypic and physiological traits were observed among the 60 accessions. A total of 1474 alleles were amplified by 104 SSR primers. The average gene diversity and polymorphic information content for the study sample were 0.2097 and 0.1748 respectively. The clustering analysis suggested that geographic origin influenced genetic distances between accessions. A total of 76 markers significantly associated with traits at P < 0.01; 73 with a single trait and 3 with two traits each. Nevertheless, only 41 significant marker-trait associations (MTAs) were observed after Bonferroni test was separately conducted for each trait. Forty-one microsatellites had significant associations with 8 forage-quality-related traits. These markers provide a feasible means of genetically improving forage quality in bermudagrass after further authentication.

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Abbreviations

ADF:

Acid detergent fiber

ADL:

Acid detergent lignin

AFLPs:

Amplified fragment length polymorphisms

B:

Biomass

CA:

Crude ash

CF:

Crude fat

CP:

Crude protein

CTAB:

Cetyl-trimethyl-ammonium-bromide

CV:

Coefficient of variation

CWCs:

Cell-wall-associated components

DM:

Dry matter

EST:

Expressed sequence tags

FDR:

False discovery rate

GLM:

General liner model

H:

Height

LD:

Linkage disequilibrium

MAF:

Major allele frequency

MC:

Moisture content

MTAs:

Marker-trait associations

MLM:

Mixed linear model

NDF:

Neutral detergent fiber

PIC:

Polymorphic information content

QTLs:

Qualitative trait loci

SSR:

Simple sequence repeats

TDN:

Total digestible nutrients

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Acknowledgement

This research was financially supported by the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 31502009) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 31672482).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Science, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Margaret Mukami Gitau, Jibiao Fan, Yan Xie & Jinmin Fu

  2. Graduate School, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 10049, China

    Margaret Mukami Gitau

  3. School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai, China

    Jinmin Fu

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  1. Margaret Mukami Gitau
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  2. Jibiao Fan
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  3. Yan Xie
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  4. Jinmin Fu
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XY and JF conceived and designed the experiment. MMG performed the research, analyzed data and wrote the manuscript. JF and XY revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yan Xie or Jinmin Fu.

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Gitau, M.M., Fan, J., Xie, Y. et al. Genetic diversity and association mapping of forage quality in diverse bermudagrass accessions. Euphytica 213, 234 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-017-2024-z

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