Abstract
Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important crop worldwide, but in many regions is increasingly faced with the issue of phosphorus (P)-deficient soils. The aim of this study was to screen for low P-tolerance in maize and to dissect the underlying phenotypic response. To this end, we evaluated a panel of 380 diverse inbred lines in the field under low and normal P conditions for 17 morphological, biomass- and yield-related traits. All traits showed a significant genotypic variation and a moderate to high repeatability for each P condition. Under P deficiency, all traits were significantly lower compared to the control with normal P availability. The variance due to the interaction between genotype and P condition was significant for most traits, but generally small compared to the genotypic variance. Regarding the low P tolerance index, i.e. the phenotype under low P relative to the control, we observed a generally similar response within the morphological, biomass- or yield-related traits. Interestingly, genotypes showing little yield reduction under low P appear to achieve this tolerance through different strategies. Based on our results, low-P tolerant and low-P sensitive lines were identified, which can be used for further genetic research as well as to improve this globally important trait in maize breeding.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Prof. Jianbing Yan at Huazhong Agricultural University and Prof. Xiaohong Yang at China Agricultural University for providing materials in our experiment.
Funding
This project was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD0100201 & 2016YFD0101201), and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 328017493/GRK 2366 (Sino-German International Research Training Group AMAIZE-P).
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WL, TW: designed the study. DL, ZC, MW, ZZ, SC collected the phenotypic data. DL performed data analysis. DL, WLL, TMW, SC, FC, LY, TW, WL wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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10681_2020_2727_MOESM1_ESM.png
Fig. S1 Trait distributions under low and normal P, and genotypic response to the two P conditions. Results are shown for (A) ear number per plant (ENPP), (B) kernel number per plant (KNPP), (C) kernel number per ear (KNPE), (D) cob length (CL), (E) cob diameter (CD), (F) hundred grain weight (HGW), (G) all dry weight per plant (ADWPP), (H) ear height (EH), (I) ear leaf length (ELL), (J) ear leaf width (ELW), (K) ear leaf order (ELO). (PNG 218 kb)
10681_2020_2727_MOESM2_ESM.png
Fig. S2 Boxplots showing LPTI for different subpopulations for the traits (A) ear number per plant (ENPP), (B) kernel number per plant (KNPP), (C) kernel number per ear (KNPE), (D) cob length (CL), (E) cob diameter (CD), (F) hundred grain weight (HGW), (G) all dry weight per plant (ADWPP), (H) ear height (EH), (I) ear leaf length (ELL), (J) ear leaf width (ELW), and (K) ear leaf order (ELO). Tem, temperate subpopulation; TST, tropical/subtropical subpopulation; G1, lines had no ear under low P conditions and had ears under normal P; G2, lines that had ears under both P conditions. Letters indicate significant differences between the groups at the 0.05 significance level. (PNG 110 kb)
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Fig. S3 Network analysis illustrating correlations among of all evaluated traits under low and normal P conditions. (PNG 215 kb)
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Fig. S7 Network analysis illustrating correlations among all evaluated traits in the G1 and G2 subgroups under low and normal P conditions. (PNG 247 kb)
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Fig. S8 PCA results of all traits under low and normal P conditions. (A) Heatmap of the quality of representation of all traits and biplot for the data under low P conditions. (B) Heatmap of the quality of representation of all traits and biplot for the data under normal P conditions. Dim, the abbreviation of dimension. (PNG 171 kb)
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Li, D., Chen, Z., Wang, M. et al. Dissecting the phenotypic response of maize to low phosphorus soils by field screening of a large diversity panel. Euphytica 217, 12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-020-02727-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-020-02727-2